On Tuesday, May 21, 2008, Honeywell dedicated a new museum to the company's history in security and intrusion products. The museum, which houses products dating as far back as 1929, features old ADEMCO catalogs, early alarm contacts, some of the original home automation equipment, and of courses, lots of historic burglar alarm control systems.

The museum, which was dedicated by Honeywell Security and Custom Electronics President Ron Rothman, is located in the company's new Melville, N.Y., office. On hand for the dedication were Leo Guthart (former chairman/president of ADEMCO, and responsible for building ADEMCO/Honeywell into the company it is today in the intrusion alarm market), Honeywell Security CEO Ben Cornett, a number of members of the First Alert President's Council representing some of the largest alarm firms in the U.S., as well as various security industry trade media.

The museum, which encompasses just a couple hundred of square feet inside Honeywell Security's New York metro headquarters, brought back memories for the First Alert dealers, Guthart and Rothman, as they pointed to different technologies they could still vividly recalled. Asked if any stood out, Guthart noted that the 527 smoke detector from 1966 was the device that served as a precursor to their entry into the more modern ionization-based detectors which they sold under the First Alert brand. The museum takes the history of ADEMCO back to 1929, when Maurice Coleman, who was running a hardware store, had just started building custom alarms for business.

"The museum memorializes the history of this company, which essentially memorializes the entire industry," said Guthart. As they watched the business grow, they had to overcome technology scalability issues. ADEMCO also was in the electronics industry as the switch occurred from mechanical relays to compact circuit boards. It presented new opportunities and new challenges for the company, said Guthart.

"It really was the early days of the electronics business," he said. "You might find you could build one unit and it would work great, but then you put a million together in an overseas factory, and it was an entirely different business."

It was at the same time that Honeywell/ADEMCO developed their in-house quality assurance (QA) division, which is located three doors away from the museum in the same Honeywell Melville, NY, building.