[Trade Journal]
Publication: Electrical World
New York, NY, United States
vol. 18, no. 4, p. 71, col. 2
A New Use for Porcelain Insulators. — A member of the English Institution of Electrical Engineers has recently made a unique and highly interesting present to that body. He is stationed in Australia, and has been running telegraph lines through the interior, where the natives swarm. These natives have hit upon the fact, in some way, that the porcelain knobs used as insulators on the telegraph poles make excellent spearheads when ground down for the purpose, and the consequence is that the demand for new insulators is abnormally large. He has sent some of the spears to England. They are about nine feed long, and it is said that the natives have shown remarkable ingenuity in bringing the porcelains to a very fine, sharp point without splitting or cracking them.
