Price Water Current Meter
date: label: date made
content: ca 1908
notes: label: Description
content: William Gunn Price designed his first water current meter in 1882 and, while the form was quite successful, improvements were soon forthcoming. This example was made in the U.S. Geological Survey shops around 1908 and transferred to the Smithsonian in 1916. It has a four-blade rudder, a wheel with six conical buckets, and a new form of yoke. It records every fifth revolution of the wheel. It is 15 inches long and marked simply “785.” And it seems to be the prototype for the Model 621 penta meter manufactured by W. & L. E. Gurley in Troy, N.Y.
label: Description
content: Ref: Arthur H. Frazier, <i>William Gunn Price and the Price Current Meters</i> (Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 60.
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. 78-87.
label: Description
content: W. & L. E. Gurley, <i>Price List of Civil Engineers and Surveyors Instruments</i> (Troy, N.Y., 1912), p. 105.
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.289645
label: accession number
content: 59263
label: catalog number
content: 289645
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Water Current Meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 15 in; 38.1 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/8 in x 14 3/4 in x 5 in; 10.4775 cm x 37.465 cm x 12.7 cm