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Odd Fred Locke

Single Number and Letter Shop Markings

In 2004, several collectors helped me catalog the various Fred Locke number and letter markings that appear randomly and singly on porcelain insulators. Thank you to Jim Kimble (Fred Locke's great-grandson), Mike Spadafora, Paul Greaves, Marty Caverly, Robin Harrison, and Fred Collier for helping with this project. It was an interesting project, but unfortunately we did not finish. It takes a lot of time to inspect every insulator and we kept finding more and more new ones. I thought at least we could make the list available for others to see and to add to the research project. If you have one that is not shown below, please take a good photograph of the marking and send it via email to me to:

elton@ r-infinity.com

If you would like to help by recording the numbers or letters you have on your insulators (for each U-number of M-number style), please click on the photo at the left. This will open up a PDF file which you can save and record the information about your insulators. Then mail the form to me at: Elton Gish, 5415 Lexington Circle, Lumberton, TX 77657.

Click on photo above to record the markings you have. Print the PDF file, enter your markings on the hard copy, and mail to me at address above.

Some insulators only have a number or letter without one of Fred Locke's usual incuse markings. They were some sort of shop marking for a trimmer operator, inspector, shift, assembly station, or some other function. More frequently the single numbers or letters appear on insulators that already have one of Fred Locke's markings. Below are photos of all the number and letter markings we have so far. It will be interesting and fun to see if there are others. There may be some surprises.