Water Current Meter
date: label: date made
content: ca 1890
name: label: maker
content: W. & L. E. Gurley
notes: label: Description
content: William Gunn Price of the U.S. Corps of Engineers designed a water current meter in 1882, obtained a patent, and arranged with W. & L. E. Gurley, a large instrument firm in Troy, N.Y., for commercial production. Gurley Precision Instruments offers improved models of Price meters to this day.
label: Description
content: This example of Gurley’s “Deep Water and Harbor Meter” has a four-blade rudder and a wheel with five conical buckets. It is 34 inches long overall. A tag on the wheel housing reads “R. R. S. No. 1 / W. G. PRICE / PAT. AUG. 25, 1885 / No. 28 / W. & L. E. GURLEY / TROY, N.Y.” The Mississippi River Commission bought it around 1890 and used it at various points between Rosedale and Vicksburg. The Engineer Office of the U.S. War Department transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1939.
label: Description
content: Ref: William Gunn Price, “Current Meter,” U.S. Patent 325,011 (1885).
label: Description
content: Arthur H. Frazier, <i>William Gunn Price and the Price Current Meters</i> (Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 50.
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. 80.
label: Description
content: W. & L. E. Gurley, <i>Manual of the Principle Instruments Used in American Engineering and Surveying</i> (Troy, N.Y., 1893), p. 244.
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. War Department
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.311708
label: accession number
content: 152263
label: catalog number
content: 311708
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Water Current Meter
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 34 in; 86.36 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 in x 33 3/4 in x 7 3/8 in; 12.7 cm x 85.725 cm x 18.7325 cm