Before the Second World War fire brigades were organised locally with little equipment and few full-time firemen. The switchboard was manned to answer fire calls from street fire alarms, then fires and appliance locations were plotted onto a large wall map. It was many years before the system used computers or communication systems. Later the National Fire Service was formed standardising equipment and drills throughout the different fire brigades. Women joined the Fire Service in the late 1930s staffing communication centres and mobile canteen vans and acted as drivers and dispatch riders, the latter often providing the only means of communication between
fire crews and their control rooms, especially during London’s bombing raids.