Price Water Current Meter
date: label: date made
content: ca 1900
notes: label: Description
content: William Gunn Price, of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, designed an exceptionally successful current meter in 1882, obtained a patent, and asked W. & L. E. Gurley, a large mathematical instrument firm in Troy, N.Y., to undertake commercial production. Following suggestions made by hydrographers who worked with Price’s early meters, Edwin Geary Paul, a mechanic with the U.S. Geological Survey, designed what became known as the Small Price Current Meter. This example, marked “U.S.G.S.,” is a further stage in that development. It is 14.5 inches long. It has a four-blade rudder, and a wheel with six conical buckets. The Geological Survey transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1916
label: Description
content: Ref: William Gunn Price, “Current Meter,” U.S. Patent 325011 (1885).
label: Description
content: Arthur H. Frazier, <i>William Gunn Price and the Price Current Meters</i> (Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 59.
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: 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.289644
label: accession number
content: 59263
label: catalog number
content: 289644
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Water Current Meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 14 1/2 in; 36.83 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 1/2 in x 14 1/2 in x 7 3/4 in; 11.43 cm x 36.83 cm x 19.685 cm