Back in time: century-old books show the history of overhead line design

Bob Guilliams not only works in North American Utility Sales for Composite Fiber Technologies for Wagners, but he is also an avid collector of antique books. During his travels, he often visits second-hand bookstores. His favorites are Moe’s on University Avenue in Berkley, California, and Powell’s at 4^e Street in Portland, Oregon.

During two separate shopping trips, he discovered two gems…The Overhead Line Construction Handbook from 1914 and the Air Systems Reference Book from 1927. Both books are in their original National Electric Light Association printing.

“I got them for a song,” he says. “I spent a lot more on bouncing them in leather. It actually lowers the value, but I’m not going to part with them anyway.”

While a company was binding old books, he asked them to separate the pages, scan them and turn them into PDF files. Then, at the EDM International airlines conference, an intern indexed them so they were fully searchable. He said they are also open source and in the public domain, although they are still being reprinted in India.

Since that time he has found two more of each book, and he kept the originals and then gave the others away to good friends and customers. He says that due to the age of the books, they don’t include any infographics.

“All drawings are in pen and ink and the type was hot-metal set on a linotype machine,” he says. “I love this stuff.”

When he takes them to trade shows, he says he “gets a lot of oohs and ahs.” To share them with a wider audience in the electrical industry, he sent the files to us at T&D world and asked us to share the PDFs with our subscribers. To download the files, simply click on the links below.

Have fun browsing through the files and thinking about the history of the liner trade! After you have had the opportunity to review the digital editions of old books, send us an e-mail with your comments.