Price Water Current Meter
date: label: date made
content: 1890s
notes: label: Description
content: William Gunn Price, of the U.S. Engineer Department, designed an exceptionally successful and robust current meter in 1882. According to his 1885 patent, the aim of the design was “to effectively exclude dirt or gritty matter from the bearings or contact thereof.” This example was probably made in the machine shops of the U.S. Geological Survey in the 1890s. It has a four-blade rudder, and a five-conical bucket wheel mounted on a vertical axis. It is 24 inches long. The wheel support is marked “U.S.G.S. 724 HYDRO.” The Geological Survey transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1916.
label: Description
content: Ref: William Gunn Price, “Current Meter,” U.S. Patent 325,011 (1885).
label: Description
content: Arthur H. Frazier, <i>William Gunn Price and the Price Current Meters</i> (Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 50.
label: Description
content: Arthur H. Frazier, <i>Water Current Meters in the Smithsonian Collections of the National Museum of History and Technology</i> (Washington, D.C., 1974), pp. 80-81.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
label: See more items in
content: Water Currents
label: See more items in
content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: U.S. Geological Survey
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.289642
label: accession number
content: 59263
label: catalog number
content: 289642
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Water Current Meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 24 in; 60.96 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 in x 24 in x 8 in; 15.24 cm x 60.96 cm x 20.32 cm