The Noti Insulator

Reprinted from "INSULATORS - Crown Jewels of the Wire", July 1972, page 2

The following article was taken from The Electrical Engineer, September 1895, and was sent in by Elton and Lynda Gish, 614 Dallas Street, Port Neches, Texas 77651.)

We illustrate in the accompanying engravings a new insulator for which a patent has been granted to Albert Vickers and Wm. Dibb, of Syracuse, N. Y.

The insulator is designed to do away with tie wires, and is extremely simple. It consists of a body of the usual form screwing to the pin with a top provided with a cavity shaped as shown in Figs. 1 and 2, and having two opposite recessed slots. The wire is laid in these grooves and a plug of the same material as the insulator, shaped as shown in Fig. 3, is pushed into the cavity. This plug holds the wire against one wall of the cavity, bending it very slightly, as shown in Fig. 4.

It will be seen that the roller action of the plug prevents the wire from moving laterally, the lugs keep it from flying up, and it is therefore securely fastened. The plug cannot come out, for the pressure of the wire against the slight groove in it holds it to its place securely enough, as there is no strain on it tending to force it out. 

The advantage of this form of insulator is this. The wire rests on nothing but smooth surfaces of glass or porcelain, so that all chance of abrasion or mechanical injury is prevented. It is held to the insulator more securely than even a tie can hold it, and all the corrosion and scratching due to the tie wires is entirely done away with. It is evident, therefore, that broken wires and crossed lines will be reduced to a minimum on lines where this insulator is used, to say nothing of the very much less time required to construct a line with them, and the securing a perfectly uniform fastening at every insulator and one which can be readily inspected from the ground.

A perspective view of the Noti insulator is given in Fig.5. This insulator is being put on the market by the Noti Insulator Co. of Syracuse, N. Y., and is made for any size wire.

Dear Dora,

The Noti insulator is pictured as being glass, yet it is suggested that it may be made of porcelain. The Noti has the basic idea incorporated in U-183 and U-186, with a seemingly more practical method of securing the conductor, and was patented more than fourteen years before U-183 (Ranson Patent of August 3, 1909). Note also that the two men who were granted the Noti patent lived in Syracuse, New York, the home of Pass & Seymour, which Jack Tod says quit marketing insulators in about 1896.

Sincerely,

Elton and Lynda Gish