Are Brooks insulators liable to damage from lightning?

Are Brooks' Insulators Liable to Damage from

Lightning?

ERIE, PA., Oct. 5.

OCCASIONAL and Mr. David Brooks do not seem to agree on the bursting of insulators at the top by lightning. And I wish to give my experience in the matter. As neither of these parties pay me anything for this letter of course I shall side with neither, but merely write what I have seen. My experience has been limited, as compared with the intelligent repairer whom "Occasional" quotes, but I have never, in ten years' experience with the Brooks insulator, found one of them injured in any way by lightning, although I have in several instances found the covered end broken open where they have been exposed to extreme heat, and the cross arm burned off - the breakage being caused, as I believe, by the melting of sulphur in the closed end by the burning arm. During the last four years I have taken down ninety-five miles of cross arms, and on taking the insulators out have found them in every instance uninjured.

We have thirty-seven miles of Erwinger [sic] Emminger (glass) insulators, and I have noticed that the lightning damages about then poles on glass to one on Brooks insulators.

GEO. W. MOORE, Repairer.