Water Current Meter
date: label: date made
content: ca 1850-1870
notes: label: Description
content: The “Moulinet de Baumgarten” is a horizontal-axis water current meter based on the form that had been introduced by a German hydraulic engineer named Reinhard Woltman, and modified by a French hydraulic engineer named André G. A. Baumgarten. This example is 17 inches long, with a three-inch diameter wheel and a four-blade rudder. It was probably made in France in the 1850s or 1860s. A tag on the box reads “LOCKS AND CANALS 66 BROADWAY LOWELL MASS.” The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals, the corporation that developed water transportation along the Merrimack River and water power for the town of Lowell, Mass., gave it to the Smithsonian in 1956.
label: Description
content: Ref: A. G. A. Baumgarten, “Sur le moulinet de Woltmann destiné à mesurer les vitesses de l’eau, sur son perfectionment et sur les experiences avec cet instrument,” <i>Annales des Ponts et Chausées, Memoires et Documents</i> (1847): 326-357.
label: Description
content: Jules Salleron, <i>Notice sur les Instruments de Précision</i> (Paris, 1864), parts 2 and 3, p. 164.
label: Description
content: Clemens Herschel, “Gauging the Flow of Rivers,” <i>Journal of the Franklin Institute</i> 57 (1869): 305-315.
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. 56-57.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France
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: Proprietors of the Locks and Canals
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.314773
label: accession number
content: 211155
label: catalog number
content: 314773
objectType: label: Object Name
content: water current meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 17 in; 43.18 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 3/4 in x 19 1/4 in x 6 in; 14.605 cm x 48.895 cm x 15.24 cm