Wenhua Engineering

Wenhua Engineering
One of Evergreen's single-tone and dual-tone sirens. A HÖRMANN-style speaker array is to the left.
Names	Wenhua Engineering Company., Limited Wenhua
Headquarters	2nd Floor, No. 90-2, Dadong Road, Shilin District, Taipei City
Key people	Yang Caiping (Chairman) Jiang Aichun (Director) Wu Jingzi (Director) Jiang Guoshu (Supervisor)
Founded	April 14th, 1978
Products	Outdoor warning sirens
Preceded by	Evergreen Electric Manufacturing Co, Ltd.

Wenhua Engineering (sometimes incorrectly translated as Mandarin Engineering, also known simply as Wenhua, is a Taipei-based manufacturer of air raid sirens, founded on April 14th, 1978. They are well known for producing sirens that resemble ACA's Cyclone 125, likely reverse-engineering one of the 200 or so units that were already present in Taiwan to create their own copies, according to ACA's president Jim Biersach.

Note: Due to a lack of known model names, Wenhua's sirens have been given conjectural names.

History

A similar company headquartered in the same office predates Wenhua by a few years, this company being Evergreen Electric Industry Co., Ltd. Evergreen was incorporated on October 17, 1974. Wenhua was incorporated shortly after in 1978 in the same building and shared many of Evergreen's existing employees, and they were most likely affiliated with each other in some way. Evergreen's (and presumably Wenhua's as well) production of sirens would start sometime during the mid-1980s at the latest, manufacturing sirens that were reminiscent, if not identical to the ACA Cyclone 125, minus the motor and intake switching places. It is also believed that the company designed their siren's rotor themselves, rather than simply stealing the design from ACA.

An unknown number of Cyclones had been installed in Taiwan beforehand, so it is likely that Evergreen/Wenhua simply got ahold of one of these units and began producing their own versions. The company/companies also sold 8-port single-tone variants of their Cyclone lookalikes, with at least one unit featuring only the 8-port stator row featured on the Cyclone. This was seemingly later refined into a less Cyclone adjacent siren, which ditched the Cyclone-style stator. A DC-powered variant of the single-tone siren was also offered, which was especially popular. In January of 2013, Evergreen would cease operations, leaving Wenhua as the sole manufacturer of the sirens. The designs of both the single and dual-tone models continued to be refined over the next few years, with the single-tone sirens switching to a different motor brand and the dual-tone sirens now having a rounded rain shield. Wenhua is still in business as of today, having won a bid to install one of their sirens as late as July of 2023.

Products

Dual-tone siren

One of Evergreen/Wenhua's dual-tone sirens. Photo taken by kanazo.

Evergreen/Wenhua's dual-tone siren consists of an 8/12 port stator enclosed in a fiberglass stator derived from that of the ACA Cyclone 125's, powered by a 40 hp (as opposed to the Cyclone's 50 hp) motor, which spins the rotor at around 3450 rpm. As previously mentioned, the company/companies likely got ahold of a pre-existing siren and examined its construction to create duplicates. The siren's intake is housed within a conical fiberglass rain shield assembly, which has the adverse effect of restricting airflow to the intake, thus making the siren quieter than its original counterpart. Evergreen/Wenhua's "Cyclones" and ACA Cyclones share minor proportional differences, such as a wider lip around the bottom edge of the rain shield and a slightly taller stator but are otherwise relatively identical. Some features of the dual-tone sirens—such as whether a lip is present on the edge of the rain shield, the height of the conical assembly, and how sharp or dull the apex of the cone is—are inconsistent and vary between units. Judging by the tags featured on the siren's motors, they do have model names, though due to the low resolution of the tag shots these model names are currently unknown. The design of these sirens has been slightly altered in recent years, with newly installed units featuring a rounded rain shield as opposed to the conical one seen on most of these sirens. The dual-tone sirens are often co-mounted with their single-tone counterparts below them, as well as some form of electronic siren reminiscent of HÖRMANN's offerings, among other configurations of relatively similar setups.

Single-tone siren

A newer-style single-tone Wenhua siren.

WIP