Samuel Oakman was born in February 1822 in Charleston, Massachusetts and died Jan 19, 1907. As a young man he entered into a coal, wood and kerosene business with Benjamin Eldridge in the late 1840s. Mr. Eldridge soon died but the Oakman and Eldridge business remained active until the late 1870s.

In the late 1860s Oakman grew interested in glass manufacturing. While he stated his occupation as “agent” or “treasurer” in directories, census records and advertisements, his many patents show us that he had a deep interest in insulator design and production, and he drove the efforts behind insulator manufacture at Boston Bottle Works, Bay State Glass Works (BBW’s short-lived successor), American Insulator Company and Oakman Manufacturing Company.

Samuel Oakman was actively engaged in the area glass factories producing bottles, demijohns, and insulators. He was granted twenty-two patents between 1868 and 1904. His first acquired patent for insulators was granted July 26, 1870. Some of these we recognize today as the “saddle groove” and “inner skirt”. The insulator had an unthreaded pinhole with a long rectangular slot vertically extending on opposite sides of the pinhole, mounting upon special matching wooden pins which expanded in their upper section. With this design, Samuel Oakman claimed his insulator “cannot be revolved or work itself loose, as is common to the insulators now used”. This design was short lived because special pins were required to mount them. These early designed insulators were base-embossed with the July 26, 1870 patent date.

The Massachusetts Glass Company was formed in May 1867 with Samuel Oakman as president. It later became know as the Boston Bottle Works. From 1872 – 1877 Samuel Oakman was listed as an “agent” for the Boston Bottle Works. It is not known who the other company officers were but is assumed he played a significant role in overseeing the glass production at the Boston Bottle Works. Insulators were never a significant production line of the Boston Bottle Works. The company was experiencing financial difficulties and there were no Boston Bottle Works listings found after this time. Shortly, thereafter, a group of investors organized and formed the Bay State Glass Works. Samuel Oakman was listed as an “agent” for Bay State Glass Works under the heading “Insulators”. Their offices were located in the old Boston Bottle Works building. The company advertised its wares as “Oakman’s Patent Screw Capped Carboys and Demijohns”. There are no known Bay State Glass Works embossed insulators. Virtually all Boston Bottle Works insulators are embossed around the base of the inner skirt or around the flat collar at the base of the pinhole.

Here are a few of his most significant patents:

November 13, 1883 – the inner skirt. We find this date embossed on Brookfield insulators, so we assume they purchased rights from Oakman. While we know Hemingray’s attorney did not consider this claim as defendable, before this patent inner skirts were nearly unknown in American insulators. Afterwards, catalogs show many styles, both communications and power, with inner skirts. The inner skirt remains a common feature on insulators today, well beyond a century later.

February 12, 1884 – design patent for the CD 145 “beehive.” Again, Brookfield embossed the date on their products and purchased rights, while Hemingray did not find this a very strong claim, although their beehive shows an effort to avoid infringing on Oakman’s patent. The design influenced Western Union enough to adopt this shape as their standard insulator from 1884-1911. Even today we still see beehives in use, and it’s one of the most popular shapes among collectors.

June 17, 1890 – the saddle groove insulator. Arguably this is among the most highly influential insulator patents in U.S. history, second only to Cauvet’s threads. Judging from the date’s appearing on insulators from Hemingray, Brookfield, NEGM, Knowles, General Electric (Star) and even recycled molds used by Lynchburg, the industry adopted the saddle groove quickly and line builders deemed it a success. Today, 123 years later, every pin-type insulator currently used by American companies (according to the ANSI catalog) has a saddle groove.

May 12, 1891 – the “Columbia” insulator. While not quite as widely employed as Oakman’s previous patents, both Brookfield and Hemingray purchased patent rights and produced the Columbia style cable insulators. We find the style used extensively in urban electric railway construction across the U.S.

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