Fred M. Locke Factory at

Victor, NY

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This is the display at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.  U-339A is on the bottom shelf just behind the insulator at the right corner.  U-339B is also on the bottom shelf but on the farthest row, third from the left.

This photo was taken on September 2, 1903 at Saratoga Springs, NY.  You can see U-339A on the lower row just left of the tree and U-339B just left of the large multipart.  So, both loop styles were made for at least two years.  Fred Locke is the little guy in the center with bow tie and mustache.

Fred Locke's Victor insulator factory in early 1900.

Fred Locke's Victor insulator factory in early 1900.  They are construction an extension to the original building, which included an electrical testing room.

Fred Locke's Victor insulator factory in summer of 1900.  Note the tops to M-2795's are piled outside the new building.  All of the tops have completed the electrical testing.  The little shed has a pot of molten sulfur where the Brookfield glass bases (on the ground near the bottom left corner of the photo) will be cemented into the porcelain gutter tops.  Then the completed insulators are packed in the secondhand wooden barrels for shipment to northern California.

Here is another view taken at the same time as the photo above.

This photo is from a glass negative.  It shows two assembly racks where men are cementing Brookfield glass bases into M-2795 porcelain gutter tops.  Note the small sulfur melting pot in the center of the photo.  The man in the foreground is inspecting the cemented M-2795's and placing the completed insulators on the ground.  Then several M-2795's were packed in secondhand wooden barrels with straw and shipped to northern California.

This is the electrical testing lab.  The rack with M-2795's turned upside-down is just left of the row of transformers.  The photo is too light in that area to see them very well.  The transformers are sitting on large white insulators similar to U-925.  Note the U-925 at the far right center of the photo.  It is mounted on a porcelain pin base.

This is a better photo of the electrical testing lab taken from the August 15, 1900 issue of Electrical Review.  The porcelain tops were tested by setting them upside-down on the rack on a support that was connected to the transformer.  Glass bases were set inside each porcelain top, electrodes mounted on a wooden beam were lowered down inside the glass bases, and then the electrical current was turned on and each insulator inspected for arcing and puncture.  The pile of tested tops were then taken outside where glass bases were cemented into the tops with molten sulfur, and the completed insulators were packed in wooden barrels for shipment.

Here is a closer photo of the pile of M-2795 gutter tops.  There must be 2,000 to 3,000 tops.  On closer examination of the original photo, many are marked with a "303", which is the original catalog number.  Later in 1900 the "Victor" styles were developed and the M-2795 was give style No. 316.

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