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 the Hemingray name was retained at the production facility in Muncie.

The main plant in Muncie closed in 1972, and the company ceased producing insulators. 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. The table provides two numbers: the Consolidated Design (CD) 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 independent of the Hemingray Glass Company. However, the style number (or name) was assigned by Hemingray to each insulator. Due to slight modifications in design over years of production, single styles can span multiple CD numbers.

CD Style Introduced Discontinued Usage Nickname 106 9 1890s 1940s Telephone, rural Pony 107 9 1950s 1960s Telephone, rural Pony 113 12 1890s 1940s Telephone Double Groove Pony 121 16 1890s 1920s Long distance Toll 122 16 1919 1960s Telephone, long distance Toll 124 4 1880s 1910s Telephone 125 15 1870s 1933 Telegraph 128 CSA 1930s 1950s Telephone, long distance 129 TS 1940s 1960s Transposition 133 Standard 1870s 1910s Telegraph Signal 134 18 1880s 1930s Telegraph, secondary power distribution 145 21 1880s 1930s Telegraph Beehive 147 1907 1920s Telegraph Spiral Groove 152 40 1910 1921 Telegraph Hoopskirt 154 42 1921 1960s Telegraph 155 45 1938 1960s Telephone, long distance 160 14 1880s 1956 Telephone, rural Baby Signal 162 19 1880s 1940s Secondary power distribution, telephone Signal 163 19 1940s 1960s Secondary power distribution 164 20 1880s 1940 Secondary power distribution

Hemingray Glass Company

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