[Trade Journal]
Publication: Electrical Review
New York, NY, England
vol. 16, no. 14, p. 4, col. 4
COLORED INSULATORS.
The Belgian Government has recently tried, with considerable success, an experiment calculated to circumvent the malevolence of stone-throwing vagrants who were causing the telegraph department great expense for the replacement of broken insulators on telephone and telegraph lines, which, following the highways for long distnaces, continually suffered in this respect.
At first iron-clad insulators were tried, but another solution had to be looked for as they were too heavy and too expensive, and the expedient of substituting the large white insulators by colored ones of the same dimensions was resorted to. Numerous experiments were made and, finally, an insulator of a grayish brown tint, similar to the color of the poles, was obtained. The coloring was effected by a coating or enamel of silicate over the ordinary insulator, thus the insulating properties were in no way impaired.
The colored insulators have been a marked success. In a certain section of line it was found that during one year 25 per cent. of the white insulators had to be replaced, as against 13 per cent. of the colored, the advantage of the latter having been apparent from the first days. Even allowing for the slightly higher cost of the colored insulators it has been established that they affect an economy of a 42 per cent. in the expense of replacing breakages in cost of material alone, without counting the economy and labor from having fewer repairs to make. In future, when a white insulator is broken it will be replaced by a colored one, and if this meets with the same fate, an impregnable iron dash clad insulator will be be substituted.
