As a resident collector in Hawaii since 1969, I have been disappointed that the hobby has never really taken off. The other side of the coin is that competition for finds in the field is nil. Collectors are few and scattered over the islands. Yearly subscription to Crown Jewels of the Wire have run about 3 to 5 over the years, with frequent dropouts and few sustained collections. I seem to be the veteran, and my general collection of about 2500 pieces appears to be the largest in the state. It was built on keeping one or more of a kind (variations) of everything found, supplemented by extensive trading with U.S. and Canadian buffs, and a little bit of foreign travel; besides scouting all the major local islands. 

By way of publicity, I have promoted an occasional newspaper article (including a full-color front page of a Sunday supplement). Also two displays were set up in local libraries. In 1990 I seized the initiative to show at bottle and collectible events in Hilo and Kailua-Kona; and even trundled my stuff over to Honolulu for the big annual bash there. Hey, that's a long way from home...more than 200 miles! It was a big advantage to meet bottle collectors, as they have made some good finds over the years. But only one was converted to serious insulator collecting. It is probable that many good discoveries in Hawaii have seeped out of the state unrecorded. Let's hear about it, for the record. 

My current effort is related to our new North Hawaii Community Hospital in Waimea. It took us nine years to plan and build this state of the art, 50-bed facility and it has been open for 18 months. One feature is a hallway display case for seasonal events and historical displays. Title of my current exhibit is Telecommunication in Society, Commerce and Medicine. It was installed in June and "by popular demand" will run into early December. Whereas, it does cover the subject rather well, it is easily recognized as a telephone insulator set up. 

There is a story line. I begin with the pu (a conch shell trumpet used even now to call people together for important events and the start of ceremonies). Then there is the tapa anvil which is a squared log hollowed underneath to provide a drum-like resonance. It could carry esoteric messages from one village to another, perhaps to relieve the dullness of long hours of pounding bark fiber into felt-like cloth. Finally, there is Ka'elele, the runner who sped from place to place with verbal messages, sometimes calling a healer to tend a sick person. This swift important member of ancient Hawaiian society is well recorded in the petroglyphs along major trails. 

Telegraph had a limited application in Hawaii, but a trove of glass-block insulators dug in old Honolulu suggest it may have come early. The display related how the telephone could have easily and quickly displaced telegraph because of the telephone's advantage of direct voice communication, and simplicity. No boy on a bicycle was required for the message to get through.

Dr. Quentin Tomich of Honoka'a provided a glimpse of 
Hawaiian telecommunications history at 
North Hawaii Community Hospital in Waimea.

Radio had its place and there were early ham operators. Because of the phenomenon of "skip", they sometimes received and relayed mainland messages when atmospheric conditions blocked out direct stateside transmission. The telephone spread rapidly in Hawaii after the first installation in 1878. This was a short line between a sugar planter's home in Maui and the plantation store. Historic family photos depict the landing of tapered square redwood poles, and insulators for a remote ranch on the west side of the Big Island, about 1890. Remnants of these early lines, often with CD 170.1 Pennycuick style glass in place or abandoned on the ground, were still easily found in the 1970' s, gradually being absorbed or expanded into newer circuits. Four-Pin Douglas fir crossarms on these same redwood poles were elements in an early line that connect the Parker Ranch Headquarters at Waimea with the harbor and piers at Kawaihae, 12 miles downslope. A pole with insulators and dangling wires is included in my exhibit. This pole is of further historic interest as it includes a sideblock bearing a porcelain pony as well as a wooden "broomstick" nail on -- both were added to the pole in WWII to serve in military communication for support of twisted-pair main lines. There was considerable training and maneuvers here. A few readers may even have been stationed at Camp Tarawa.

The old 12-mile line was perhaps originally equipped heavily with CD 120 C.E.W.'s in light blue, light aqua and purple. The blues and aquas were usually "good as new" and some still in service in the 1970' s on a newer generation line with two 8-pin crossarms and turned fir poles. All the purples had been discarded and could be recovered only as crumbling shards on the ground. A few were renewed by painstaking reconstruction. Heady collecting, you can bet! 

Other oldies in the display include CD 187 and CD 188 mine-types insulators probably used as transpositions, mounted under the crossarm. One heavily weathered through-pin was recovered new Puuwaawaa. Found also were 1870 patent CD 120's, CD 126 blob tops, CD 160 Californias and Gayners; and the usual run of CD 102's -- Hemingray, Brookfield, a no name Pennycuick style full of bubbles and Stars. Some were crackled by lightning strikes as a charge shot along the wire from pole to pole. There was an occasional three patent date CD 102 and a scattering of delightful CD 133's.

Further reference to history is derived from 1983 Centennial Publication of Hawaiian Telephone Company. Dial telephones were commonly in service in Honolulu by 1910. The Waimea station on the Big Island, by coincidence; was in the last division statewide to convert to dialing in 1957. For further local color, I included lists of 1940's linemen, and their tools; and names of operators who "manned" the switchboards. Only single, young women were hired.

Other items in the setup loaned by a local "telephone family" are keepsake embedded cross-sections of the first San Francisco to Honolulu undersea telephone cable (1957), and the first Honolulu to Tokyo cable (1964). Also a short length of up-to-the-minute ANMA400 CSI cable. One end is exploded to reveal all the 800 colored-coded insulators copper wires. Comment: Requirement for cable splicers' perfect color vision.

Old telephones include a 1907 wall mounted unit weighing in at 32 pounds with the batteries; a cradle type desk model of the 1920's; our 1960 5-digit dial set (saved from burial in the landfill when replaced in the '70's); and a 1996 transparent case cordless at 2 pounds total weight. A map plots early lines of Umikoa Ranch and of Parker Ranch on the eastern slope of Mauna Kea. These private circuits were single wire, connecting remote cowboy cabins with headquarters. A prize insulator recovered as these lines were supplanted by mobile radio in the 1970's: a CD 120 C.E.W. in olive green! 

The display has drawn frequent favorable comments, but so far no hidden old-time insulator collections, or collector, have been revealed!