Skip header and navigation
Insulator
- Description
- Piece of aqua-blue Collins insulator.
- Title
- Collins Telegraph Insulator
- Category
- TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
- Sub-Category
- ELECTRICAL AND MAGNETIC TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
- Start Date
- 1865
- End Date
- 1867
- Description
- Piece of aqua-blue Collins insulator.
- Narrative
- From the Kispiox area
- History Of Use
- Insulators kept the wires linking telegraphs insulated from the wooden poles that held them aloft. Insulators can be dated by looking at material that they are made of, and how they were manufactured. The earliest insulators were made of glass, and were first made in the 1840s. Threaded glass insulators were patented in 1865 as a means of more securely fastening the glass to the wood pins (like a bottle and its cap). Porcelain and ceramic insulators, which were found to have superior protective properties, came into use in the late 1800s.
- Cultural Context
- The Russian–American Telegraph, also known as the Western Union Telegraph Expedition and the Collins Overland Telegraph, was an undertaking by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1865–1867, to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco, California to Moscow, Russia. The route was intended to travel from California via Oregon, Washington Territory, the Colony of British Columbia and Russian America, under the Bering Sea and across Siberia to Moscow, where lines would communicate with the rest of Europe. It was proposed as an alternate to long, deep underwater cables in the Atlantic. The line was abandoned in 1867. Source: Wikipedia
- Accession No.
- 1986.14.1
- Type of Record
- Museum Artifact
Less detail