Telegraph Poles to Grossalmerode; poles made of glass

More Regarding Glass Telegraph Poles.

It is becoming generally known that the supply of timber for telegraph and telephone poles is vry rapidly decreasing, while the demand in this country as well as in other countries is steadily increasing. The problem what the world wouuld do when the entire supply would be exhausted, however, is already being solved by an eminent architect of Germany who has been granted patents in the Unites States and European countries on poles made of glass, as mentioned in a recent issue of China, Glass and Lamps.

A stock company has been organized and a factory for the manufacture of these wonderful poles built in Grossalmerode, that wonderful city in the province of Hessen Nassau, Germany, famed for its marvelous silicious sands and also for that celebrated German glass-house clay, which, although mined before the discovery of America more than 400 years ago, stands up to this date without equal, and it may be safely doubted that anything better will ever be taken from treasure vaults of Dame Nature.

Assisted by the most needed products of glass manufacture close at hand, these poles are made. It may be of interest to add that besides being strengthened by interlacing and intertwining with strong wire threads, the poles are made of strong hard glass which, it is claimed, will be vastly superior in strength and lasting qualities to the ordinary wooden pole. The selling price has not been fixed buut from a report before us the company is willing to accept $6 for a pole of the length of 23 feet.

We are told that in the colonies much trouble and loss is experienced by swarms of insects attacking a pole and so weakening it that by the first strong gust of wind the pole drops as if felled by an ax. The Imperial Post Department, which has control of all the telegraph and telephone lines in Germany, recently ordered the use of glass poles on one of its tracks.