Richard Green patented glass insulator

To RICHARD GREEN, of the firm of Davis, Greathead, and Green, of the Flint Glass Works, Brettell-lane, in the county of Stafford, for improvements in insulators for insulating the wires or rods employed for conducting or transmitting electricity.— [Sealed 28th December, 1853.]

THIS invention consists in a new mode of constructing insulators of glass or porcelain. The principal feature of novelty is the forming of such insulators entirely of glass or porcelain, and with a screw of the same material, for connecting the insulator to a post, to brickwork, or to any place to which the insulator is to be fixed, for supporting and maintaining the electric wires or rods in proper position. The patentee remarks, that he is aware of glass insulators having already been made, and used on railways, in which the cap and stem of the insulator are of one and the same piece of glass; but the screw of such insulators has invariably been made of iron or other metal; the objection to which is, that the expansion of the metal has been found to break the glass which surrounds it, thereby rendering insulators thus constructed entirely useless. The object of this invention is to obviate the above objection by constructing the screw, the cap, and the stem of the insulator of one homogeneous mass of glass or porcelain, instead of forming the insulator in separate pieces, as heretofore practised.

In carrying out his invention, the patentee takes a mould, of the desired shape of the insulator, complete, that is, with the stem, the cap, and the screw (for fixing it) shaped in one piece, and into this mould he pours the molten glass in the manner usually practised by glass-makers in casting glass.

The patentee claims forming the several parts of insulators (namely, the cap, the stem, and the screw) of one entire piece of glass or porcelain, instead of forming the same in separateparts or pieces, composed of iron or other metal combined with glass or porcelain, as heretofore practised. And he claims, more particularly, the forming of the screw of the insulator of the same material as the other part thereof, as hereinbefore particularly described and set forth.