Price Subsurface Direction Meter
notes: label: Description
content: William Gunn Price designed a water current meter in 1882, obtained a patent, and asked W. & L. E. Gurley, a large instrument firm in Troy, N.Y., to undertake commercial production. Price also designed an instrument that determined the direction the water flowed, but not its speed. This is an example of that instrument. It is 33 inches long and may date from the late 1880s. It has a four-blade rudder that is counterbalanced by a heavy iron ball (5-inch diameter; 7-inch including flanges); inside the ball there is a magnetic compass marked, on its face, “W. & L. E. Gurley, Troy, N.Y.” The “U.S.C. & G.S. No. 13” inscription indicates that this example was used by U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The National Bureau of Standards, the organization that calibrated current meters for federal agencies and engineers in private practice, transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1959.
label: Description
content: Ref: Arthur H. Frazier, <i>William Gunn Price and the Price Current Meters</i> (Washington, D.C., 1967).
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), p. 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
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content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: National Bureau of Standards
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.316592
label: accession number
content: 225869
label: catalog number
content: 316592
objectType: label: Object Name
content: subsurface direction meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 33 in; x 83.82 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 in x 34 3/4 in x 8 in; 15.24 cm x 88.265 cm x 20.32 cm