Jack's history on the development of the spiral insulator was more detailed
than the original Mill's account with more information on the work done by
Jeffery DeWitt on the spiral design concept. One statement in particular stuck
with me off and on for two years: "A complete double-circuit line near a
steel mill was constructed with these units and they were found to be remarkably
clean after nine years of service.
Well, I have spent my entire life in the Hammond - Gary - Michigan City area
of northwest Indiana, a steel producing center of the U. S. since the turn of
the century and a world leading area in that product for many of those years. My
grandfather and father were steel men all their lives.
In any event, I always thought that the Hammond - Gary area would be an ideal
mill contamination environment for spiral insulators. What if indeed spirals had
actually been used on lines right here in Indiana, just miles from where I live!
About two years later in April, 1973, I was at the annual insulator show in
Greencastle, Indiana. As luck would have it, Jack Tod, on his way home from one
of his great research trips, stopped by to attend the show. What happened next
is best told in Jack's article from the October, 1973 issue of Crown Jewels. That
article is reprinted here in part:
I would like to add the following to Jack's article:
First, the Engineering Supervisor at the Gary NIPSCO was extremely skeptical
(to say the least) about my story of these insulators having been used in his
district. However, he listened patiently and after we found those
'all-telling" notes on the old pole cards, he had a complete change in
attitudes. I dare say I could have told him that the noon is made of green
cheese and he would have accepted it as a scientific fact!
Secondly, I did check all other possible leads I could come up with at the
time, all resulting in deadends. A search of the underbrush along the pole line
was hopeless as the toll road bridgework, installed in 1955-56, was built
immediately adjacent to the railroad right-of-way through the entire area in
which the spirals were employed. Any that might have been tossed (at 22 lbs.
each this toss would be an Olympic Class shot-put) in the weeds would have been
bulldozed into history!
Finally, the last good information I received on the use of these insulators
came from the late Albert Cook of the South Shore Railroad Line Department and
that is covered in the material from Crown Jewels you have just read. Good ole
Albert was almost apologetic to me about the fact that he had not thought to
save a couple of these insulators for thirty years after they came down to give
to me now.
By 1976, the leads and information have come down to "0". If I was
ever going to locate one of these insulators I figured it would have to be by
the rarest of chance encounters! I could not shake the belief though that
somewhere an old retired NIPSCO lineman was sitting in a rocking chair with a
very unusual porcelain spittoon by his side! It is a vision that I still have
from time to time and, take my word for it, that it is rather interesting, even
after all these years!
In the fall of 1983, after quite a bit of correspondence, I finally met Ken
Stefan for the first time in person on one of his trips back to Michigan. We
were naturally talking about porcelain insulators of all types and the subject got around (as it always does with insulator collectors
for some reason which you cannot even find in the Bible) to the topic of our
"dream insulator".
Ken's dream insulator was, and still is, a Thomas product of the multi-part
"lily-shell" variety with a white glaze from an early EHV line in
Canada. (In those days, anything above 10 kV was "extra high
voltage"!).
I told Ken that the only insulator that I would pay "real" money
for or trade an "eye tooth" or two for was an original style spiral
unit as in Mills' book and used on the NIPSCO line in Gary, Indiana years ago.
The next summer Ken went to work as an electrical engineer for Commonwealth
Edison Co. in Chicago, Illinois. A letter from Ken on July 28, 1984 contained an
attention getting revelation: "Bob, I met an insulator collector at work
who has a spiral lime post insulator." That was interesting! It was to get
even more interesting a few days later!
After Ken went to see this animal in the flesh, he wrote me back on August 1
that he had more accurate information. This collector did indeed have a spiral
insulator and that it was actually a pin type and not a post type!
My first inclination was that it might be the Helical version, but a conversation
with Ken a couple weeks later revealed that it was the same style as
shown in the photo in Mills' book. Also, this collector was Jim Crandall who I
later met as one of the hosts of the 1985 National and he knew of two others!
Jim was kind enough to bring the unit to the London Show in November 1985 and
the thirteen years of ups and downs with as many twists and turns as in the
insulator, I finally not only had the opportunity to see one of these units, but
to actually have one in my hands, a feat that I had long ago figured would
probably never come to pass!
What I did not know at the time was that in less than a year I would be
holding one again, this time in my own collection. This would be the result of
Ken's excellent detective work.
Also, not only would we eventually find more of these insulators, but that we
would end up with genuine historical documentation of the use of these same
units on a line in Illinois. That line was possibly the first line to be
equipped with spirals (the NIPSCO units were installed in May, 1930, the Wilmette, Illinois units about six months
earlier) and we would see the last units possibly in service anywhere on the
original poles, construction, hardware and wire as installed in 1929. Less than
a year later, the line would be entirely converted to underground service!
The location of the spiral line was of great curiosity to those who knew
about it. For those not familiar with Wilmette, Illinois, it is an attractive
clean little community of very nice homes along tree shaded streets. That was
the setting of these insulators when we saw them. In the early years, the line
was partly in the woods and it was hard to figure out the use of insulators
designed for heavy contamination being used in this environment!
Fortunately, the Commonwealth Edison Co. had kept fairly complete records on
file of the history of this line and the letter we found from October 10, 1929
(see copy of the letter attached) answered that question and a few others. The
original installation site of Joliet made more sense as it had, and to some
degree still has, areas ideal for line tests of contamination insulators.
Some general information on the spiral insulators is in order here. The
insulator that Jim Crandall has and another one scrounged up by Ken Stefan, are
nearly identical with the one in the photo in Brent Mills' book which is on
display at the Lapp Museum. They are chocolate brown made by the casting method
and have a 3/4 inch threaded steel pin thimble cemented in then with a lead
alloy material (common for J-D insulators of the period) They are unmarked,
except Ken's has a blue ink factory code on the firing rest similar to others I
have seen on J-D two skirters. Both are of the two spiral design. One of the two
spirals starts on either side of the conductor groove with the second spiral
starting on the opposite side running down below the first.
The most noticeable difference between the unit in the Lapp Museum and Ken's
and Jim's insulators is that, unlike the one at Lapp which has a trimmer blade
cut wire groove, theirs has a cast wire groove.
The unit that I have is different from the three mentioned above. First, it
has a machined tie wire groove the first I have seen on a J-D cast insulator.
This might indicate that it was an early production unit while they were still
getting the "bugs" out of this extremely complex design. Secondly, the
spirals start out of register compared to the other three insulators. The others
have the upper termination of the spirals starting immediately below the
conductor groove, where as my unit has the terminations starting about 45
degrees off center of the conductor groove, on the side of the insulator and
ending 45 degrees off from the other units.
Thanks to Elton Gish, I was supplied with a copy of the original patent filed
by Charles Stroup on March 16, 1929 (patent No. 1,869,397 dated August 2, 1932
-- see attached copy of patent) which helped in the research on these
insulators. We now believe due to the timing, location and the original company
which used these insulators (Public Service Co. of Northern Illinois which was
Charles Stroup's employer) coupled with details of the insulators, that Wilmette
units may have been the first production spiral insulators made by J-D and the
first line to be equipped with them.
The insulators installed on the line in Gary, Indiana described in the 1939
Stroup report were probably made about the same time as the 1929 units for
Joliet and ended up in Wilmette. The units in Gary did not go into service until
May, 1930. It should also be noted that both Public Service Co. of Northern
Illinois and the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. which owned the spiral line
in Gary were both under the same management at that time.
The Stroup report refers to the spirals on the Gary, Indiana line as
"the original shape of the first spiral insulators" and though the line may be the second to be equipped with
them, it was the first to employ them in a severely contaminated atmosphere,
thus receiving all the attention during the testing years. The Wilmette line was
gradually forgotten awaiting the arrival of the insulator collector to give the
line the historical treatment it deserves! A photo of this line is shown below.
I would like to thank Ken Stefan and Jim Crandall as they are the two people
who really made most of this story possible by locating these insulators and
providing much of the information gathered since 1980.
It is hoped and believed that the spiral story is not yet over. A few more of
these insulators will almost certainly by tracked down by us or others off the
old Wilmette line and hopefully a few more will find their way into collections
or museums. There is still information to be gathered and questions to be
answered on these interesting insulators and I intend to keep one ear to the
ground with the hopes of reporting more news and findings on the spiral saga in
the future.
)
)
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
)
