Hemingray Glass Company


The Hemingray Glass Company was an American glass manufacturing company founded by Robert Hemingray and Ralph Gray in Cincinnati in 1848. In its early years, the company went through numerous and frequent name changes, including Gray & Hemingray; Gray, Hemingray & Bros.; Gray, Hemingray & Brother; Hemingray Bros. & Company; and R. Hemingray & Company before incorporating into the Hemingray Glass Company, Inc. in 1870. The Hemingray Glass Company had factories in Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky with main production in Muncie, Indiana. Although Hemingray was best known for its telegraph insulators, the company produced many other glass items including bottles, fruit jars, pressed glass dishes, tumblers, battery jars, fishbowls, lantern globes, and oil lamps. In 1933, the Owens-Illinois Glass Company purchased the company but retained the production facility in Muncie under the Hemingray name.
The main plant in Muncie closed in 1972 and insulator production ceased. The complex is now used by Gerdau Ameristeel, a steel production company headquartered in Brazil.

Insulators

Hemingray was best known for producing telegraph and telephone pin insulators used on utility poles. To give an overview of the large variety of styles produced, the following table contains the twenty most common. There are two numbers given in this table: the Consolidated Design number and the style number. The CD number is from a classification system developed by collectors that refers to the shape of the insulator and is completely independent from the Hemingray Glass Company. However, the style number was assigned by Hemingray to each insulator. Due to slight modifications in design over years of production, single styles can span multiple CD numbers.
CDStyleIntroducedDiscontinuedUsageNicknameImage
1544219211960sTelegraph
121161890s1920sLong DistanceToll
1524019101921TelegraphHoopskirt
145211880s1930sTelegraphBeehive
10791950s1960sTelephone, RuralPony
1554519381960sTelephone, Long Distance
10691890s1940sTelephone, RuralPony
163191940s1960sSecondary Power Distribution
160141880s1956Telephone, RuralBaby Signal
162191880s1940sSecondary Power Distribution, TelephoneSignal
133Standard1870s1910sTelegraphSignal
1221619191960sTelephone, Long DistanceToll
125151870s1933Telegraph
147---19071920sTelegraphSpiral Groove
129TS1940s1960sTransposition
113121890s1940sTelephoneDouble Groove Pony
128CSA1930s1950sTelephone, Long Distance
134181880s1930sTelegraph, Secondary Power Distribution
164201880s1940Secondary Power Distribution
12441880s1910sTelephone