In the October 1973 issue you printed some correspondence pertaining to different styles of CAST iron insulator brackets. The information was very interesting to me because I've been doing some research on bracket styles used here in Eastern Canada to support threadless insulators a hundred or more years ago on telegraph lines running through urban areas, and what I've found I think will be of interest to many other collectors

Here's a polaroid snapshot of six different brackets I've collected. All are of hand-wrought, FORGED iron, and one still has a chunk of black glass, C.D. 740, firmly cemented in place with burlap and tar. Two of these brackets still contain what appear to be the original forged-iron nails used to fasten them to a chimney.

There seems to be a considerable difference in bracket styles to be found. With some kinds I've seen as many as four pins on a single fixture. But I think most of these multiple pin brackets were manufactured since the advent of threaded insulators, and perhaps even since the telephone came into general use. I've seen them installed where one would expect telephone lines to go, but far from the logical path of a telegraph line. Other brackets, especially those with a single pin, were found along the paths of telegraph lines between telegraph offices and early rail lines, located with the aid of an 1865 map.

One common feature, however, distinguishes the brackets in the picture from the types I've seen elsewhere. The pins are not threaded at all. They are hammered more-or-less round, and several small chisel-points of the iron have been raised at random intervals to grip the burlap which was then tarred before the insulator was pressed into place. I understand this burlap cushion absorbed the expansion and contraction of the iron and the glass caused by fluctuations in temperature.

Some collectors I've contacted have informed me that brackets of this general description were manufactured and sold by several electrical equipment supply houses in the 1880's. Colin McIntosh of Victoria, British Columbia, sent me a Xeroxed page from a Tillotson catalogue which proves Tillotson sold similar brackets at that time. But I think these were most likely threaded, because threaded glass insulators are advertised on the same page. At any rate, the fixtures illustrated in the Tillotson catalogue appear to be somewhat more refined than the hand-forged ones I have found.

Now maybe, just MAYBE, other insulator buffs are interested in this sort of paraphernalia, too, and our great little magazine can serve as a forum for ideas, opinions, and researched information on the subject of pioneer experiments in the design of insulator brackets, to supplement what we are still learning about our first love, INSULATORS!