Range Finder
name: label: maker
content: Elliott Brothers
notes: label: Description
content: Francis Weldon (1836-1926), a British Army officer in India, devised this simple and portable range finder in the early 1870s. This example belonged to the U.S. Geological Survey, a federal agency established in 1879. It came to the Smithsonian in 1909. The inscriptions read "Elliott Bros., London” and “U.S. G. S. 1” and “Weldon Range Finder."
label: Description
content: Ref: Francis Weldon, “Improvement in Apparatus for Measuring Distances,” U.S. Patent 165,282 (July 6, 1875).
label: Description
content: “New Range Finder,” <i>Scientific American Supplement</i> 223 (1880): 3550.
label: Description
content: Lieut. A. H. Russell, “A Report on the Weldon Range-Finder,” Appendix 23 in United States Army. Ordnance Department, <i>Annual Report of the Chief of Ordnance</i> (Washington, D.C., 1880).
label: Description
content: United States Army. Ordnance Department, <i>Description and Instructions for Use of Weldon Range Finder</i> (Revised ed., Washington, D.C., 1917).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United Kingdom: England, London, City of London
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.252982
label: catalog number
content: 252982
label: accession number
content: 49676
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Range Finder
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 3 in x 1 3/4 in x 1 in; 7.62 cm x 4.445 cm x 2.54 cm