Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1920 — Bore Into Telephone Cables [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Bore Into Telephone Cables

Beetle Causes No End of Trouble to Telephone Companies in California. Washington.—When telephone girls in California find their wires are “shorted,” a bug may be on or in the

wire, for California has a wood-boring beetle that goes through wood and also through alloyed substances considerably harder than lead. The beetle h&s put hundreds of telephones out of commission by boring holes in the cables that carry the wires. Water enters the cables, mak-

Ing wire connections useless until the bored places are found and repaired. The problem of control of this metalboring beetle is still unsolved, according to the bureau of entomology of the United States department of agriculture, and it will be difficult to find a practical way. ,

This Beetle Bores Through Lead Sheathing of Aerial Cables—Magnified Ten Times.