Metallic Thermometer
date: label: date made
content: 1850-1900
name: label: Inventor
content: Saxton, Joseph
notes: label: Description
content: Joseph Saxton (1799-1873), an accomplished scientist, inventor, and mechanician, joined the U.S. Coast Survey in 1844 at the request of the new Superintendent, Alexander Dallas Bache, and began developing instruments for measuring terrestrial phenomena. Among the first was a metallic thermometer for use in deep water. Bache described this in 1848, saying that it proved “decidedly the most convenient” of the several forms tried. The thermometer coil was “like that of Breguet, only of much stouter material, and of two metals, silver and platinum, soldered together.” And the “plan of registering resembles that adopted by Jurgensen of Copenhagen, and by Montandon of Washington, in their metallic thermometers.”
label: Description
content: Several Saxton thermometers were made in the Coast Survey’s instrument shop, and still in use at the start of World War I. This example came to the Smithsonian in 1929. Here the thermometer is held in a brass cylinder that is encased in a hexagonal frame. The cap of the cylinder is marked “SAXTON’S / METALLIC THERMOMETER / 17.” The scale around the circumference of the thermometer extends from -40 to +174 degrees Fahrenheit; one of the two pointers registers the lowest temperature to which the thermometer was exposed.
label: Description
content: Ref: [A. D. Bache], <i>Report of the superintendent of the coast survey, showing the progress of the work during the year ending November, 1848</i>, p. 39.
label: Description
content: Bache, “Lecture on the Gulf Stream, prepared at the request of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” <i>Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey during the Year 1860</i>, pp. 165-176, on 166.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: District of Columbia, Washington
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
label: See more items in
content: Thermometers and Hygrometers
label: See more items in
content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.309672
label: catalog number
content: 309672
label: accession number
content: 106954
objectType: label: Object Name
content: thermometer
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: frame: 12 in; 30.48 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 12 1/8 in x 4 in x 2 7/8 in; 30.7975 cm x 10.16 cm x 7.3025 cm