Orleans, Cape Cod, MA Early Phone Openwire Thru Trees

By Joe Maurath, Jr.; posted March 24, 2014
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This community as well as many others on Cape Cod, Massachusetts were once served by the Southern Massachusetts Telephone Company (So. Mass. Tel. Co.). The company employed many CD 102 glass insulators with the forementioned initials, very likely made by Brookfield. In addition a few different types of small white porcelain spool insulators used for individual customer connections embossed with the initials: S.M.T. Co. are known. By 1938 New England Telephone had absorbed all of SMT's exchanges. When they did, Ma Bell apparently instructed the newly acquired area managers to rid any CD 102, 104 and 112 insulators (and other styles as well) to conform with the more Bell System corporate designs of the day. Having grown up with NET&T openwire around here I never found any of these styles in service! Among exceptions were a CD 102 SMT (apparently a miss-out) on a dead end street here in Abington, MA all by itself on a 10-pin crossarm. It had every reason to be a Brookfield... but was not before climbing for it! That was in 1970. Same for the only CD 112 I found active was on a really old rusty fire alarm line in 1968 that ran through the woods in Milton, MA. It turned out to be a MLOD NET&T keg! My only other CD 102 in-service finds were along a private communications line built with surplus materials between two municipal pumping stations, in 1969. Most were CD 102 So. Mass. Tel's along with some CD 104 NET&T's (never seen in service around here either). Evidently when Ma Bell was re-insulating their lines here in MA they couldn't get rid of those CD 102, 106, 112s etc. fast emough to replace with Bell designs. I imagine most of their discards are long buried. However some apparently re-used, re-sold and recycled upon other lines as mentioned above. If it wasn't for that virtue, at least there certainly wouldn't be hardly any SMT glass examples in collectors' hands today....

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