Anemometer
notes: label: Description
content: James Henry Coffin (1806-1873) was an American educator, mathematician, and meteorologist who, while living in Ogdensburg, N.Y., in the late 1830s, designed and built a self-registering anemometer. This object, given by Coffin’s son Selden, is a remnant of that instrument.
label: Description
content: In Coffin’s complete instrument, a hopper attached to the foot of the rod attached to a wind vane received a continuous stream of dry sand. Every fifteen minutes, a spout carried from an ounce of sand from this hopper and dropped it into the appropriate receptacle. At the end of the month, Coffin weighed the sand contained in the thirty-two receptacles. The result showed the duration of the wind for each point of the compass.
label: Description
content: Ref: James Henry Coffin, <i>WInds of the Globe</i> (Washington, D.C., 1875).
label: Description
content: John C. Clyde, <i>Life of James Henry Coffin</i> (Easton, 1881).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
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.247698
label: catalog number
content: 247698
label: accession number
content: 47594
objectType: label: Object Name
content: anemometer
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 in x 12 3/8 in; 2.54 cm x 31.4325 cm