[Newspaper]
Publication: The Long Beach Press
Long Beach, CA, United States
p. 10, col. 1-2
BIG DEAL FOR
INSULATOR
OUTPUT
Glass Plant at Long Beach
Sells Next Five Years'
Product to Pacific
States Company.
LONG BEACH GLASS
SHIPPED TO CHINA
Dollar Steamship Company
Deals With California
Glass Insulator
Company
By Myra Kingman Miller.
Another stride in the progress of Long Beach industries was made this week when the California Glass Insulator Company signed up a contract with the Pacific States Electric Company of San Francisco whereby the latter company will take their entire output of insulators for the next five years. This means practically the handling of a million dollars' worth of Long Beach products in that period and tens of thousands of dollars paid out in wages to Long Beach workmen.
The Dollar Steamship Company has also signed a contract with the glass company to handle its goods in the Orient. The Long Beach factory carries representative stock in Shanghai and Hong Kong and has sales agents in the Orient. The Dollar line has 10 ships giving a service that enables the Long Beach product to successfully complete with European products.
There is much electrical construction work in the Orient now. The federal government is putting in it’s own telegraph system and will own it completely. It is using the California insulators, the Long Beach firm having the supply contract.
Supply Combine
The Pacific States Electric Company is a combination of the largest three supply companies on the coast and is doing a world-wide business, advertising in full pages in all leading magazines. H. C. Carter, formerly of Long Beach, is the president. W. L. Greenwood, also well known in business circles here, is the vice president. These men signed the contract with Arthur G. Munn, president of the Glass Company, of which John Morns [sic] Morris is treasurer, S. S. Stonaker is secretary and Robt. P. Frist is manager. There are but three insulator manufacturers in the United States, the other two being in New Jersey and Indiana.
The California Glass Insulator Company owns ten acres of land in one of the finest industrial locations on the Long Beach Inner Harbor. The factory and outbuildings occupy only about half the site, but plans are on foot to enlarge it. A new tank, or furnace, will be built next summer, just south of the present one. This will about double the output of the factory. The company makes bottles and other glassware here as well as insulators.
Citrus Belt Sand.
The sand used is found near Riverside, California, and is of a most desirable quality. It is shipped in car loads, as is the oil used for firing. The company has its own spur track to the factory from the railroad. The fires never go out from the first day of September until the last day of June, when the plant closes down to rebuild the tanks.
The company runs two shifts, day and night, and the tremendous heat of 330 [sic] 3300 degrees Fahrenheit is never allowed to go down in the tank where sand is converted into glass. Visitors are allowed to look into the seething mass when the door is opened only through a bule glass, this as a protection to the eyes.
Buildings Completed.
The buildings at the plant include the offices, general and private, the batch room where are the piles of sand, soda and broken glass and the automatic scales which tell the workman just the proper mixture he has in his wheelbarrow, to the drahm.
A long walk extends to the main building, where the tank and moulding machinery are located. This tank is what a layman would call a furnace and here the sand mixture is thrown in a while over it plays continually a half dozen flames which are blown under teriffic [sic] terrific pressure from each side, keeping the temperature up at 3300 degrees.
The moulten [sic] molten mass at the bottom runs through to a receiving tank, also heated, where it is taken out and dropped into a machine which revolves past several men who each in turn have some part in the making of the moulten [sic] molten mass into what proves to be insulators when it leaves it leaves the last man and is placed in an annealing oven, which is heated at one end and cool at the other so that the glass in the pans as they glide onward will cool slowly.
The finished insulators are then stored by the thousands in the yard.
Power Equipment.
Another building has the engines and air compression run by electricity and on an auxiliary engine run by oil with compressed air. A long receiving platform and shipping platform occupy a station near the tracks, as does the great stationary oil tank.
The clay of which to build the tanks is imported from Germany, being the only kind that will withstand the heat.
The papers and the recent deal were signed at the Los Angeles offices of the Pacific States Electric Company which are in charge of Carter’s son, also formerly of Long Beach.