Item 24
Price Realized: $196 |
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Item: 24 Description: Cooke’s Sleeve. Pumpkin Colored Glaze. Grade B for some surface wear. This is the FIRST insulator ever patented… in 1842… two years before Samuel Morse built the first telegraph line in the US. The Cooke & Wheatstone Telegraph Company of England built a line for the London & Blackwall Railway in 1840, burying the line underground. The insulated wire failed and, in 1842, Cooke received a patent for this above-ground insulator. The groove in the center is for a metal staple to hold the insulator to a post, and the telegraph wire was threaded through the insulator. In View 2 the insulator is tilted so you can see the flat backside. View 3 is an endwise look, showing how crudely formed these are. Most known examples have a light colored glaze as shown at the top of View 4. The British archeologist who was in on the discovery of these reported that 20 normal colored ones were found for every pumpkin colored one. Our best guess is that 10 to 15 are known with the pumpkin colored glaze. Estimate: $400 - $600 Open: $190 Price Realized: $196 |
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