Price Water Current Meter
date: label: date made
content: 1896
name: label: maker
content: W. & L. E. Gurley
notes: label: Description
content: William Gunn Price, of the U.S. Engineer Department, designed an exceptionally successful water current meter in 1882, obtained a patent, and asked W. & L. E. Gurley, a large mathematical instrument firm in Troy, New York, to undertake commercial production. Building on suggestions made by hydrographers who used these early instruments, Edwin Geary Paul, a mechanic with the U.S. Geological Survey, designed what would be known as the Small Price Current Meter.
label: Description
content: This example, the first production model of that successful design, is marked “W. & L. E. GURLEY, TROY, N.Y. / PATENTED AUG. 25, 1885 / NO. 1.” The “U.S.G.S. 91” inscription means that it was the ninety-first current meter owned by the Geological Survey. Geological Survey documents record its purchase in December 1896. It is 12 inches long, and has a stationary single blade rudder, a wheel with six conical buckets, and electrical contacts. 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. 58.
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. 84.
label: Description
content: W. & L. E. Gurley, <i>A Manual of the Principal Instruments Used in American Engineering and Surveying</i> (Troy, N.Y., 1905), pp. 211-220.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Troy
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: U.S. Geological Survey
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.289643
label: accession number
content: 59263
label: catalog number
content: 289643
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Water Current Meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 12 in; 30.48 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 3/8 in x 12 1/2 in x 4 15/16 in; 11.1125 cm x 31.75 cm x 12.54125 cm