Gas Meter
name: label: maker
content: Down & Merrifield
notes: label: Description
content: The nameplate on this cylindrical meter reads "Down & Merrifield, light meter, New York." and "Serial 97439."
label: Description
content: Samuel Down (1815-1876) was an Irishman who, having moved to New York City, worked as a journeyman mechanic for the Manhattan Gas-Light Company. He opened his own shop in 1841, showed examples of his work at the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1853, and by 1858 had made over 80,000 meters, both wet and dry. Down joined with Richard Merrifield in around 1860. Down & Merrifield and two other firms formed the American Meter Company in 1863.
label: Description
content: This meter came from the Smithsonian Instrument Room, and was probably associated with Joseph Henry, the physicist who served as the first Secretary of the Institution. Henry had long been interested in the subject. In 1837, on his first trip abroad, Henry visited a gas establishment in London, noting in his diary that the “meters were explained to us by the ade (sic) of a glass model which exhibited the interior arrangement of this ingenious instrument with great clearness.” In December 1854, when the Smithsonian’s lecture room was fitted with gas lights, Henry wrote that it “will be the most beautiful [room] in the country or perhaps in the world for the purpose intended.”
label: Description
content: Henry also knew that some scientists used gas meters as spirometers, for measuring respiration, and he may have intended using this one for that purpose.
label: Description
content: Ref: Samuel Down ad in <i>The American Gas-Light Journal</i> (July 1, 1859).
label: Description
content: Alfred Lief, <i>Metering for America: 125 Years of the Gas Industry and American Meter Company</i> (New York, 1961).
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Chemistry
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Transfer from Smithsonian Institution Instrument Room
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CH.314736
label: catalog number
content: 314736
label: accession number
content: 210894
label: serial number
content: 97439
objectType: label: Object Name
content: gas meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 13 in x 10 1/2 in x 11 in; 33.02 cm x 26.67 cm x 27.94 cm