Boyden Hook Gauge
date: label: date made
content: mid 19th century
notes: label: Description
content: Uriah Atherton Boyden was a consulting engineer in Boston whose water wheels and turbines brought riches and fame. He also introduced a hook gauge for determining the depth of water flowing over a weir or dam. James B. Francis, the engineer who designed most of the water power systems used at Lowell, Mass., in the mid-nineteenth century, described this hook gauge as “an instrument of inestimable value in hydraulic experiments.” Francis went on to say that “All other known methods of measuring the heights of the surface of still water, are seriously incommoded by the effects of capillary attraction; this instrument, on the contrary, owes its extraordinary precision to that phenomenon.”
label: Description
content: Several American firms offered instruments of this sort. The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals at Lowell donated this unsigned example to the Smithsonian in 1956. It may have been used by Francis.
label: Description
content: Ref: James B. Francis, <i>Lowell Hydraulic Experiments</i> (New York, 1855), pp. 18-19.
label: Description
content: Keuffel & Esser, <i> Catalogue</i> (New York, 1913): 461.
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
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content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Proprietors of the Locks and Canals
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.314775.01
label: accession number
content: 211155
label: catalog number
content: 314775.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: hook gauge
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 49 in; 124.46 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: scale: 28 in; 71.12 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: container: 7 1/2 in x 8 3/4 in x 51 1/2 in; 19.05 cm x 22.225 cm x 130.81 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: p7083: 18 in x 60 in x 48 in; 45.72 cm x 152.4 cm x 121.92 cm