Lambert Water Meter
date: label: date made
content: ca 1898-ca 1925
name: label: maker
content: Thomson Meter Company
notes: label: Description
content: This is a disc water meter with split case and no serial number, that fit a ⅝” pipe. The brass case is marked “SPECIAL.” The cap is marked “THE LAMBERT M.F.D. BY THOMSON METER CO.” The dial reads in gallons.
label: Description
content: John Thomson, a prolific Scottish-born inventor raised in the United States, was one of the first Americans to realize the advantages of a disc water meter. In the mid-1880s, he met Frank Lambert, a French machinist in Brooklyn who had designed a typewriter with the letters arranged on a nutating disc. Working together, Thomson and Lambert designed a water meter featuring a nutating disk. The Water-Waste Prevention Company was formed to produce meters of this sort, and reorganized as the Thomson Meter Company in 1891. With Lambert as its president, Thomson Meter introduced the Lambert meter in 1898, claiming that the new model “embodied all the improvements which the tests of time and long service have proved to be requisite in a perfect meter.” The Neptune Meter Company acquired Thomson Meter in 1925 and was still offering Lambert meters in the late 1930s.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Brooklyn
topic: label: Subject
content: Water
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
label: See more items in
content: Natural Resources
label: See more items in
content: Water Meters
label: See more items in
content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: A. A. Hirsch
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.325860
label: accession number
content: 245003
label: catalog number
content: 325860
objectType: label: Object Name
content: water meter
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: bronze (overall material)