June 1996 The Last Gasp Of Open Wire Insulators

Even though he didn’t realize it, President Harry S. Truman began the demise of the use of open wire (pin type) glass insulators in telephone plant construction in the United States on October 28, 1949. On that day, he signed the Bill (63 Stat. 948) to amend the Rural Electrification Act to authorize the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) , now known as the Rural Utilities Service, to make loans for the purpose of furnishing and improving rural telephone service.

The REA was first created by Executive Order 7037 on May 11, 1935 as part of a general program of unemployment relief. Its task was to bring central station electric service to farms and ranches. At that time, barely ten percent of farms in the United States had electric service. To accomplish its mission, it helped rural groups form Cooperatives which would build and own the lines, contract for wholesale power, and bill its customers for electric usage. REA was the source of financial capital which was not readily available from the private financial markets. It made loans at the cost of money to the Federal Government. This program was so successful that it grew to over 1000 rural Cooperatives within ten years serving over 1.6 million rural customers.

Initially, telephone service was more widespread than electric service. This was because telephone lines and service could be provided at less cost than electric lines and service. It took fewer people cooperating together to build a “farmer line” or a smaller community to make a small “Mom and Pop” company economically feasible. However, the depression, maintenance, storms and personnel replacements eventually wore down this base and in the 1930s fewer farms had telephone service than each of the years before. By 1940 the low point of 25 percent of the farms with telephone service had been reached. Coincidentally, in that same year, the percentage of farms with electric service (30 percent) passed the percentage of farms with telephone service. With the end of World War II, electricity was being brought to farms and ranches through the aid of the REA program at a rate double that of telephone service being provided by private industry. Because of this slow progress, the RE Act was amended to allow loans to private telephone companies and cooperatives. As a comparable measure of its success, the telephone program in its first ten years grew to over 700 rural telephone companies or cooperatives serving over 1.1 million customers.

By way of this history of the origin of the REA telephone program, we come to its role in the death of open wire telephone plant construction in the United States. The REA telephone program was very fortunate to obtain the services of retired members of the Bell Telephone Laboratories and other industry experts at the time of its beginning. This cadre of highly trained engineers took upon themselves the challenge of essentially creating a standardized rural telephone industry. They realized they had a once in a lifetime chance to create an industry from scratch and not be restricted to or hampered by past practices. They wanted REA financed systems to be state-of-the-art and as forward thinking as economically possible. As an example, they set standards such that eight-party service would be the minimum acceptable with four-party service as the ultimate goal. This was considered revolutionary when at the time the accepted grade of rural service was 10 or 20-party service if at all.

To accomplish their goals, they knew they had to standardize on everything. All rural systems must use the same parts, be assembled in the same configurations and be built by the same construction methods, and be tested and proven in the field. This would give them economies of scale and lower costs. They created an REA engineering division which wrote standard specifications, designed standard configurations, created standard constructions methods and tested and accepted individual parts for use on these rural systems. The open wire (pin type) glass insulator was one of many individual parts tested and accepted for use on REA- financed construction. A group of engineers called “Committee A” was formed to analyze the appropriateness of parts submitted by various manufacturers for use in REA construction projects. Their function was to determine if the part was appropriate for widespread use, to set up and monitor a field trial of its usage, and to grant it REA “acceptance” where appropriate.

The pin type insulator was one of the items on the very first “List of Materials” (LOM) acceptable for use in REA construction projects issued in December, 1950. This LOM was similar to a catalog and pin type insulators were listed as item “ma”. A copy of that page is shown as Figure 1 with six insulators listed as acceptable. As part of the overall construction methods and design, these REA engineers wrote numerous specifications. Of particular interest to pin type insulator collectors, they wrote PE-4 (Specifications for Wood Insulator Brackets), PE-5 (Specifications for Wood Insulator Pins) both of which were published in November 1951 and (Standards for Bolt Type Steel Communications Insulator Pins) published in December, 1952. Figures 2, 3, and 4 are drawings for brackets and pins from these publications respectively. Also, REA published Form 511b (Specifications and Drawings for Open Wire Construction) which all contractors had to follow in constructing the rural open wire lines. Figures 5 and 6 are typical drawings from that standard showing the construction of a double ten-pin crossarm and a “V” notch splint tie, respectively.

As a result of these standards, millions of the pin type insulators accepted by REA were used in rural telephone construction in the United States. Like everything else, the pin type insulator industry experienced changes, albeit slowly. For 23 years they remained on the REA list of materials until March, 1973 when Committee “A” voted to terminate all open wire construction by REA financed companies or cooperatives. Insulated copper pair cable construction had superseded open wire construction . No longer would open wire construction be financed by REA, so rural companies ceased using pin type insulators in new construction and used them only for maintenance of existing systems. Table 1 outlines the 23 year history of pin type insulators in the REA program.

As I said in the beginning of this article, President Truman began the demise of the use of pin type insulators when he signed the Bill creating the Rural Electrification Telephone program. No one else but the Federal Government could have created REA which in turn had the clout to create a standardized open wire construction design and similarly, had the clout to kill it. We at REA are proud of the accomplishments of the rural telephone industry and our part in fostering it. Today, the REA financed companies and cooperatives provide some of the most advanced, digitally switched, single party service to over six million customers.

Mr. Schrage is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Chesapeake Bay Insulator Club,
9274 Linden Court, Manassas, Virginia 22110

Table 1 Use of Pin Type Insulators in the REA program

Date	Event
1949	REA telephone program created on October 28, 1949.
1950	Initial List of Materials issued in December with American Structural Products and Armstrong Cork Company as the first accepted manufacturers of pin type insulators. Insulators listed as item "ma".
1953	In February, the Hemingray #45 insulator replaced the Hemingray #42 double petticoat insulator manufactured by American Structural Products on the List of Materials.
1956	In July at meeting #57 of Committee "A" , Kimble Glass Company replaced American Structural Products as the accepted manufacturer of Hemingray # 17, 45, and 56 insulators.
1957	In March the double petticoat insulator category (Hemingray #42, and Armstrong # 1) was dropped from the List of Materials by vote of Committee "A" in meeting #70.
1958	The June issue of the List of Materials added a new category of insulator. Added were the "double groove-carrier" type of insulator represented by the type "TS" by Armstrong Cork Company and the "Hemingray TS-23" by Kimble Glass Company.
1962	In April, a note was added to the List of Materials allowing the use of the "TW" (one piece insulator) for the "TS" manufactured by Armstrong Cork Company in certain specific types of construction.
1970	A new manufacturer (H. K. Porter) was added as a supplier of toll grade insulators. The Porter company's model number was "106932".
1972	In January, 1972 the List of Materials was reissued and both the Kimble Glass Company and the Armstrong Cork Company were dropped as manufacturers of pin type insulators. I was not able to find a record of why they were dropped but the most likely reason is that they stopped manufacturing insulators and requested REA to remove them the List. This left H. K. Porter as the only supplier of insulators for REA projects.
1973	At meeting #404 of Committee" A", it was voted to eliminate all open wire construction in the REA program. As a result, pin type insulators were dropped completely from the List of Materials. I talked to a senior engineer who is still with REA and he states that it was a very emotional event as the "old-timers" at the time hated to see a project die that served them so well.