Being innovative and the first to use hard coal (anthracite) in glass making,[2] the business thrived until it, including Bookfield's home, was destroyed and swept away in a dam break of the local water system.

[2] Martin Kalbfleisch,business man, administrator, and politician, who needed a reliable source of quality glass bottles, purchased the company in 1864, and left the operation to Brookfield.

The Brookfields acquired the rights to a patent by Louis A. Cauvet[4] for affixing the inverted cup-shaped insulators securely on mounting pins by means of screw-like thread structure.

[6] With the growth in American telegraph communications, the threaded Brookfield glass insulator type became the standard for telegraphy lines in the country.

World War I brought severe shortages of coal, which required reducing production substantially.