Bryan Gravimeter
date: label: date made
content: 1940
name: label: maker
content: Carter Oil Company
notes: label: Description
content: Gravimeters (gravity meters) are extremely precise instruments that measure the earth’s gravity at a specific location. Gravimeters are often used by prospectors to locate subterranean deposits of valuable natural resources (mainly petroleum) as well as by geodesists to study the shape of the earth and its gravitational field. Differences in topography, latitude, or elevation—as well as differences in subterranean density—all affect the force of gravity. Commonly, gravimeters are composed of a weight hanging on a zero-length spring inside a metal housing to negate the influence of temperature and wind. Gravity is then measured by how much the weight stretches the spring.
label: Description
content: This gravimeter was built in 1940 under the direction of Andrew Bonnell Bryan (1897 1989), a Ph.D. physicist who served for many years as Director of the Geophysics Division of the Carter Oil Co., in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is similar to the other Carter gravimeter in the collection. The Carter Oil Co. donated this instrument to the Smithsonian in 1959.
label: Description
content: Ref: F. G. Boucher to P. W. Bishop, August 6, 1959, in NMAH accession file. Boucher was at this time Senior Research Associate at Jersey Production Research Co.
label: Description
content: Notes prepared by D. G. Gardner, August 19, 1959, in NMAH accession file 230,370.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Oklahoma, Tulsa
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Agriculture and Natural Resources
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content: Natural Resources
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content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Carter Oil Company and Jersy Production Research Company
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: AG.MHI-P-7659
label: accession number
content: 230569
label: catalog number
content: MHI-P-7659
objectType: label: Object Name
content: parts, gravity meter