April 1984 Porcelain Insulator News

Last summer I purchased two boxes of insulators in Virden, Manitoba -- one box of glass ones, the other of porcelain.

None of the porcelain ones had any markings, but on closer examination we discovered one insulator with crude printing on it shown by the exact tracing of it I've enclosed. This was scratched on the insulator before it was glazed and fired, and the letters are a very dark brown or black under the medium reddish brown glaze. The thinner glaze spots, especially the annular rings of the sudden contour changes at the groove area are a creamy sand color, very pretty.

On checking a map of Pennsylvania, we find there is a place called Latrobe, so maybe you or one of the readers of Crown Jewels can give us some information. Any ideas?

I enjoy the informative articles and columns by you, Marilyn and the other writers. Keep up the good work.
Ken Morrow, NIA #2929
Regina, Sask., Canada

This U-113 insulator was made by Pittsburg High Voltage Insulator Co., Derry, Pa., and they exported a great number of these to Canadian companies. Latrobe is located only about 6 miles from the insulator plant in Derry.

It's pretty obvious a workman spent some of his break time scratching his identity onto one or more of the unfired/unglazed insulators, but I wonder if some of his doings show his name spelled "Clarence". This is an age-old pastime. For those not fortunate enough to be able to practice it in automobile or porcelain insulator factories, the proverbial method is to put your name and address inside a bottle and toss it into the nearby river or ocean.

I once found an old cone-top soda can in a boulder slide below a rest stop on a mountainous highway. Inside it was a paper scrap with a name, an eastern address, a date in the early 1950's and the words "please write to me". I always intended to write but just never did, and the paper got lost in the shuffle. This has bothered me ever since, so I feel that I could partially redeem myself by writing to Latrobe. But maybe it would be more appropriate if you did that, since you have the specimen right in your hand. Even though Latrobe is probably many times its 1915 size now, street numbers and all. maybe an address such as "Clarence Starry or survivors" would work. The U.S. Postal Service sometimes works wonders and is also sympathetic to this sort of thing, so maybe you could enclose your unsealed/stamped letter in a covering request letter to the Latrobe postmaster and ask for his assistance. I am enclosing a U.S. letter stamp for you in event you care to give it a try. One catch. If you get a reply from one of Starr's grandchildren confirming the Derry employment, you just have to let us know about it!

About a year ago I saw some new U-635 sky-tone units. Below the recess-embossed O-B logo marking was the new incuse date stamp of "4-79" (April 1979).

Also, O-B did use sand blast markings on some of their larger unipart pin types. I had a U-907, chocolate glaze, with the regular recess-embossed "Silent - Type" marking (above left here) on its large bottom skirt and a sand blast marking "5-OB-5" on its top skirt.
Robert Winkler
Michigan City, Indiana

Thanks for your report. When the factory wrote that the dating was beneath the B but inside the 0, that didn't sound possible -- and obviously wasn't.

I was aware of the sandblast markings on multiparts and non-pintypes, but I think it's unusual for it to appear on even a one-piecer resembling multiparts. Presumably the numbers in your marking indicate 1955 manufacture.

The enclosed photo is of an insulator I picked up from a retired lineman. It weighs about 3 pounds and is about 16-1/2 " from the tip of the lag screw to the end of the porcelain. The iron yoke is embossed "PATENTED". Can you tell me what it is?
Ken La Frenier
Townsend, Mass.

The color photo is nice, but it probably would not come out in the printing. I've substituted above the sketch of it from the patent section in my book.

Your insulator is a tree insulator, and the patent on it is shown on page 152 of my "Electrical Porcelain" book -- patent 1,882,486, 8-11-32, W. H. Cole, Abington, Mass.

The holes in the ends of the mating "sister hooks" are to accommodate a securing tie wire after the hooks are enclosed around the conductor wire.

The old and unusual tree insulators are interesting and desirable items to many collectors, and I'd guess this item would be valued around $20.

Elton Gish (Port Neches, Texas) specializes in early U.S. porcelain insulators and has one of the best collections around of the Imperial, Fred Locke and other early items. He has consistently been one of our best reporters on these items and was the source for much of the information on the early insulator specimens for the published reference books.

He recently sent another batch of photos of rarities in his collection, and I just have to share the following two photos with you. You'll probably never see these insulators in the flesh anywhere unless you visit Elton.

Pictured side by side above are both sizes of the "Ethridge" insulators, each being one of the rarest of pin types. These were patent #676,881, June 25, 1901, Harry Ethridge, McKeesport, Pa. They have a smooth pin hole with a single annular groove at its top and are rotatable on a special pin with a locking hook on its top.

The larger brown one is the "No. 2" and is U-376A. It is unattributed to manufacturer but was probably made by Lima Insulator Co. or Locke, ca. 1901-1910.

The smaller bluish one is "No. 1" and is U-376. This particular specimen is traceable to a former Lima employee and bears the "LIMA, N.Y." marking.

I like to think of the above two insulators as the real "Adam and Eve" analogy for porcelain pin types, and each of these specimens is a Fred M. Locke rarity.

The "Roman Helmet" porcelain design was created by Fred Locke, and this basic design was made by Locke (and later copied by Thomas) for about 40 years with little change.

At the right is a U-242 "hat" design used mainly for secondary power distribution lines from the 1890's to the present day. Virtually every manufacturer of porcelain pin types made this general style, probably billions of them in the aggregate.

But this specimen is the "Eve" of it, and all others followed. Its Fred Locke marking stamp and the glaze type dates it as about 1902. It was their catalog #44 throughout the 50 or more years it was made by Locke.

Enclosed is a dimensioned sketch of an early glazeweld that I picked up not too long ago. It is something like the U-962 yet quite different in several ways and dimensionally. Should it be added to the U- Chart?

Most U-962's I have seen have a red-orange glaze like that used by Locke in the 1906-1925 era, but this one has a tan and yellow-brown glaze like Fred Locke used. Unfortunately, it's unmarked.

Also enclosed is a photo of my 2 favorite insulators. The one on the left is a U-746 New Lexington with their marking. The large lilly-shell is a 30 Kv New Lexington, also with their marking.
Mike Spadafora, NIA #1869
Goldsboro, N.C.

The 6-1/2" glazeweld will be U-961 in the Universal Style Chart, and I've shown above a preliminary scale sketch of it. This specific style was shown as the #406-1/2A in the 1905 Ohio Brass Co. catalog of "Victor" insulators when they were selling agents for the Locke line. I presume Locke might have furnished unmarked insulators for resale by other companies such as Ohio Brass Co.

Hopefully the photo of the two New Lexingtons will come out in the printing at least enough to indicate their general size and shape. It's rare for anyone to have any marked New Lexington insulator; it's rarer to have such a pretty one; and it's practically unheard of for anyone to have two different ones in the same household.

Over the years, Elton Gish (Texas) has kept our files staffed with information he has gleaned from researching old trade journals and technical magazines, and this has been helpful in answering many questions about what went on in the very early years of the electrical power industry.

The following clipping is from Electrical Review, the issue of April 4, 1908. It is very typical of the editorial style of that era and the extent to which manufacturers such as Fred Locke tried to promote their new products.

The Lima Insulator Co. plant was almost totally destroyed in a fire September 1908. Judging from this ridiculous insulator design concept, maybe just as well?

Insulators for Extremely High-Voltage lines.

The accompanying illustrations show some new developments in insulators for high-voltage lines which have been brought out by Fred M. Locke. The frame-type insulator shown in Fig 1 has been designed for lines requiring 150, 000 volts line pressure.

This insulator will stand a spray test of 280,000 volts. leaving a large factor of safety. It will carry a mechanical load of 20,000 pounds, and can be constructed to carry as much more as desired by increasing the I-beams and side rods and the bearing surface of the porcelain. The frames are interlocked like a chain, and the line can not come down. All the porcelain parts are under compression and are designed to have a surface large enough to carry the required mechanical load with a large factor of safety. Under an electrical test this insulator does not show the usual static stresses, and is extremely quiet up to the arcing point which takes place between the frames. In case of an arc from lightning, this will take place between the frames and not injure the insulator. These insulators are furnished in any size for line voltages from 70,000 volts up to 300,000 volts, with a factor of safety of two under a spray test and any mechanical load desired. The insulator is designed for the hanging type, but can be supported at either end, and may be used horizontally or perpendicularly. The insulator is manufactured exclusively by the Lima Insulator Company, Lima, N. Y., under Mr. Locke's rights to patent which are now pending.

The book Porcelain Insulators Guide Book for Collectors, Second Edition, 1976, has been out of print since 1980 in its original form of printing/binding. Since then, I have annually made up a small new batch by hand binding. This also affords the advantage of being able to update the books.

I thought it would be nice to get this updating info to those who obtained the book several years ago, a possible solution being to put all this info on a couple of sheets and asking people to send a SASE for a gratis Xerox copy. A real mess -- the postage expense and a real paper-mill.

Alas! Mike Spadafora (N.C.) to the rescue by suggesting the following in a recent letter.

"There have been something like 15 or 16 new U- Chart additions since the book was published in 1976. It would be a big help if you could run all of these in CJ as a pullout sheet like you did in 1977 for the index of porcelain column articles. We could then remove this sheet and add it to our insulator books."

So here it is. Just remove this centerfold sheet and put it in your insulator book. It contains all the real meat of the additions to the book since 1976.

ITE Imperial merged with Gould, Inc. on May 1, 1976, and the name change to Gould, Inc, became official on December 1, 1976. The ITE marking formerly used on insulators made at the Victor, N.Y. insulator plant was phased out in 1977, and the pin types were then marked with an incuse stamp representing the Gould, Inc. logo as shown above.

In 1980, Gould entered into a joint venture with Brown, Boveri and Co. of Baden, Switzerland, and the Victor, NY plant operated as Gould-Brown Boveri, with continued use of the Gould logo marking. In late 1981, Gould sold its interest in the joint venture to BBC, and the former I-T-E divisions became Brown Boveri Electric, Inc., a subsidiary of BBC. The BBC marking on insulators commenced at that time.

The marking shown at the right has been reported on a U-709A manufactured by Pittsburg High Voltage Insulator Co.

In recent years the O-B monogram markings carry a manufacturing date. The first number(s) is the month, and the last two numbers are the last two digits of the year.

The company advised that this dating was beneath the B and within the 0, but collectors have reported specimens with the dating (incuse numbers) underneath the regular recess-embossed O-B logo stamping.

The 'GLEN' marking (rare) is known on white-glaze U-38, most probably made by Fred M. Locke, ca. 1898-1901.

The MACY marking is known circularly embossed on the crown of U-124 dry press specimens, and it is unattributed. The insulators were probably made by Square-D Co., Peru, Indiana, ca. 1930's.

In September 1975 Porcelain Products Co. bought Knox Porcelain Corp. and incorporated the Knox items into the products sold by PP representatives. They started marking all products with both the PP and KNOX logos (underglaze), reportedly using a single integral handstamp device.

Pricing Guide Values shown are only the author's best guess as to probable Value. Some of these items are very rare to unique, and values may not have been established by actual sale of specimens at this time.

U-		$$
40	Fred M. Locke, tan-brown	45
124	"MACY INSULATOR", brown	125
190	Cap part	20
219	N.N., brown (cemented)	200
219A	N.N., brown (cemented)	200
376	N.N., brown or light blue	*
392	N.N., brown	80
408A	Locke, brown	125
930	Imperial, white	40
935B	N.N., white	60
940B	Imperial/Locke, white	65
941	Fred M. Locke, white	110
954B	N.N., brown	20
975	N.N., brown shades	275
983	N.N., mottled brown	700