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Messages => News => Topic started by: geoff_smith on August 04, 2020, 03:39:54 PM

Title: Progress through Resistance
Post by: geoff_smith on August 04, 2020, 03:39:54 PM
(https://lockegenealogy.org/blog/20200508.insulator_small.png)
Fred M. Locke was a telegraph operator who was reprimanded in 1893 for not tapping out a return message to the Buffalo office. But he was certain that he had!
He looked into the problem and discovered that the telegraph wires were losing voltage. After much experimentation, he made a highly restistive substance by baking clay, and the porcelain insulator was born! This made the telegraph much more reliable, and paved the way for the telephone later.
-- Found in Forgotten Stories of the Finger Lakes