Note the lack of crossarm braces and throughbolt for crossarm mounting. Definitely 1890s. Methinks...like WCJ...that crossarm braces did not come into commonplace usage until around 1900. Further...I contend that crossarms were offered soon after 1900 with either two holes for mounting into older pole gains (those chiseled out portions of poles you still sometimes see around for crossarms to comfortably set into) *and/or* with provision made for either mounting arrangement (those have two diagonal holes for the "old" lag-screw method AND one for the "new" throughbolt way of mounting, thus three holes). (Please refer to per some of my vintage photos). Me-also-thinks that true-red glass insulators as offered by Hemingray quite possibly were made. As delineators or line markers, like the ambers and cobalt/peacock blues for identifying street lighting circuits. With the myriad of electric service wires criss-crossing all over the place with no seem of any logical order in the earlier days of the electric industry in congested areas (before standards were set), it would not surprise me if those true red insulators were deployed as delineators to ID fraudulent customers who illegally tapped into others' line drops before their meters. That would make sense since the electric utility industry has used bright red (or other striking colors) plastic meter seals to "mark" customers who are suspect of energy theft. The CATV industry has done the same through the years to ID tampering by using similar plastic seal/tags on suspect/accused-customer service drops. These brightly colored delineators may well have been the later versions of brightly colored insulators in the days of open-wire when customer hanky-panky with diverted service by the bad guys was detected. However, as a meterman we bought a bunch of those bright red seals 25 years ago and after an intensive metering audit of our system, we found virtually no problems. 99.9% customers legit after a thorough system-clean-sweep. So after some years after that, we threw threw those dusty, day-glo seals away. Electric systems in their earlier days probably did the same thing with their bright-red glass insulators after finding almost all customers after on-site audits to be totally legit. The utilities back then probably found it non-policy for *that* bright red glass insulator being ordinarily posed right in front a legit customer's house. "Saying It Is You". Worse yet putting that red glass *on* your house since open-wire services were commonplace until the 1950s. I saved a few of those brilliant 1980s meter seals from the dump. They make for great keychain hooks since it makes for finding misplaced keys a lot easier ;-) Maybe someone saved a few of those bright red glass insulators that probably could not be used anywhere else without flagging any nearby customers. Perhaps by lineworkers' wives or kids as window sun-catchers. Who knows? Just a thought! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |