Fire alarm systems were first used when the City of Boston placed the first public fire reporting system into service at noon on April 28, 1852. Standardization and regulation would lag behind the introduction of new technology by 50 years, but it wouldn't always be that way.

Signaling standards have been around for more than 110 years. The first signaling standard dates back to 1899, when the National Board of Fire Underwriters (NBFU) sponsored the development of NBFU-71A. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) began sponsorship of NBFU-71A and other related standards in 1905. Between 1903 and 1993, several other standards were developed for technologies, such as initiating devices, visible signaling, supervising stations and household smoke alarms.

The next major change came in 1993, when NFPA 72 was consolidated with 10 other standards and recommended practices to form NFPA 72, the National Fire Alarm Code. This change was necessary to bring all signaling requirements into a single document. As part of this consolidation, visible signaling requirements were introduced into the Code to address the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); inspection and testing requirements were also added at this time.

Subsequent revisions in 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2007 resulted in detector spacing changes, new requirements for voice intelligibility and major reorganization of the Code. However, the most significant change was the introduction of Mass Notification Systems (MNS) into Annex E of the 2007 Code. The recommendations for MNS were added as an annex and were not mandatory under the 2007 edition of the Code.

Undoubtedly, the most significant change in the history of NFPA 72 occurred in the 2010 edition. The most visible change is to the title: National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code. The document was completely restructured to accommodate the addition of Emergency Communications Systems (ECS) into a new chapter. MNS is a subset of ECS and was relocated from Annex E to Chapter 24. The Department of Defense was a key player in the development of this technology in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001. The 2010 Code has 29 chapters, but many are reserved for future use. The Code is now organized so that restructuring will not be necessary for many years.