The Past, Present, and Future of Emergency Blue Light Technology

Mark Twain once said, “The secret of making progress is to get started.” Poet Samuel Johnson said, “The future is purchased by the present." And Walt Disney famously remarked, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” 

These musings generally ring true across all contexts. All innovations start as a single idea. From there, new iterations are shaped by bright minds, shifting needs, and lessons learned. Then, if you’re lucky, you get to keep iterating until that idea becomes something meaningful and trusted.

Blue light technology is no exception. What started as a single-use solution for personal safety has evolved into a technological hub that now supports a wide range of applications. Today’s blue light towers are multi-functional safety and communication platforms. And that’s just the start.

The future of blue light technology is being built as we speak, but to understand where it’s going, we have to understand where it’s been. 

Past

The history of blue light towers dates back to 1990 with the passage of the Clery Act. Named after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old Lehigh University student murdered on campus, the Clery Act explicitly requires institutions to improve transparency around campus crime and reporting. Implicitly, it underscored institutions' responsibility to take a more proactive approach to campus safety.

Blue light towers quickly emerged as a way to fulfill that responsibility. Designed as easily recognizable emergency beacons, blue light towers provided a direct line of communication to campus police or security at the push of a button. Their role was intentionally simple - make help easy to find, easy to access, and impossible to miss.

By 2012, 92% of all university campuses had a blue light emergency call station. Their visual presence alone both deterred crime and attracted incoming students. But as cell phone use increased, the single-use nature of early blue light towers became less relevant. Blue light technology had to evolve or risk dying of redundancy. 

Present

The good news is that most blue light towers were well-positioned to adapt. For starters, 

there’s their location. Many emergency blue light towers were placed in remote areas where visibility was low and accessibility critical. Places where new infrastructure is otherwise difficult or costly to install. Places where connectivity and security needs intersect.

Moreover, their existing power and infrastructure made them well-suited to deliver new capabilities. Today’s modern housings offer up to 9 feet of vertical space, plenty of real estate for new security technologies. Now, blue light towers are more IDF closet than monolithic call box.

Lastly, modern blue light towers rise to meet changing aesthetic needs. Dated, monochrome towers signal a lack of care, even worse when they are found to be out of order. New blue light housings branded with custom colors and logos reinforce an institution’s identity and signal that safety is a priority.

This combination of location, power, space, and aesthetics makes today’s blue light towers ideal platforms for expanded functionality. They can now support surveillance cameras, offer Wi-Fi connectivity, host gunshot detection, exhibit school spirit, and more. Fully customizable, these solutions effectively expand your technological edge while maintaining their original mission of safety.

Future

And if you thought that wasn’t enough, Pedestal PRO is continuing to push the capabilities of the once simple blue light tower even further.

As a leading provider of innovative blue light housings, we collaborated with a major university in Utah, challenging engineering students to reinvent the blue light tower as part of a Capstone project. With our hardware and funding, they were encouraged to experiment with its capabilities to create something new. 

One concept students explored was the evolution of the blue light tower ecosystem into a separate community utility hub. The emergency would remain purpose-built for security and critical communications while the community-focused tower would reimagine how the same infrastructure could support public spaces. Placed at locations like park trailheads, it could provide interactive maps, bike repair tools, information on parking availability, weather updates, inspirational messaging, and even device charging stations. 

It’s ideas like these that continue to shape our thinking as we chase what the next generation of blue light and public-space technology can become.

A Legacy of Innovation

For nearly 25 years, Pedestal PRO has delivered custom housings for security and communication technologies. That expertise then expanded into blue light architecture where we bring the same precision, flexibility, and design-forward approach.

We custom-create housings to accept all your intercoms, cameras, and other tech without high upgrade costs or long lead times. By collaborating with trusted technology partners, we ensure a seamless fit every time. And to complete the package, we can design a custom finish, decal, or full-color wrap to match your brand.

From its past as a ‘push for help’ phone, to its present as a multi-purpose technology hub, and a future limited only by imagination, Pedestal PRO has been there through it all.

Let us help you reimagine what a blue light tower can do for your campus or community. Explore our most innovative blue light solutions to date.