Measuring & Mapping - Overview
Where, how far, and how much? People have invented an astonishing array of devices to answer seemingly simple questions like these. Measuring and mapping objects in the Museum's collections include the instruments of the famous—Thomas Jefferson's thermometer and a pocket compass used by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their expedition across the American West. A timing device was part of the pioneering motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge in the late 1800s. Time measurement is represented in clocks from simple sundials to precise chronometers for mapping, surveying, and finding longitude. Everyday objects tell part of the story, too, from tape measures and electrical meters to more than 300 scales to measure food and drink. Maps of many kinds fill out the collections, from railroad surveys to star charts.
"Measuring & Mapping - Overview" showing 8 items.
Hotel Kankakee ruler
- Description (Brief)
- An advertising novelty for the Hotel Kankakee of Kankakee, Ill. This six-inch ruler is made of celluloid and has a 1929 calendar printed on the reverse. The front has advertising copy stating "All Outside Rooms Fireproof" and "Wonderful Dining Room."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1929
- maker
- American Art Works, Inc.
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.1045
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.1045
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Schweydar-Bamberg Torsion Balance
- Description
- Torsion balances are used to measure weak natural forces. Torsion balances generally consist of a straight rod with masses attached to each end, suspended from a wire. It is then encased in metal to isolate it from temperature or wind disturbance. All mass near or far has an influence on the rod, but the wire resists this force and twists in the opposite direction, producing through its twisting the measurements of the forces imposed upon it.
- The Humble Oil and Refining Co. purchased this photographic torsion balance in 1926—this was just four years after Americans began making gravimetric surveys for prospecting purposes—and used it for oil exploration in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama until the introduction of gravimeters in 1936. Although this instrument has no signature, it was probably made by Askania, in Friedenau, Germany. Askania opened a sales office in Houston, Texas in the 1920s.
- The Schweydar Bamberg instrument is an Eötvös torsion balance with a photographic arrangement for recording the results automatically. The form was described in 1921 by Wilhelm Schweydar, a German geophysicist, and produced by Carl Bamberg. It was publicized in the United States by C. A. Heiland, a German geophysicist who worked for Askania in Houston and who taught at the Colorado School of Mines.
- Ref: Askania Bulletin Geo 103E
- W. Schweydar, "Die Photographische registrierende Eötvössche Torsionswage der Firma Carl Bamberg in Berlin-Friedenau," Zeitschrift fur Instrumentendekunde 41 (1921): 175-183.
- C. A. Heiland, "Schweydar-Bamberg Types of Eötvös Torsion Balance" Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 10 (1926): 1201-1209.
- C. A. Heiland, Directions for the Use of the Askania Torsion Balance (Houston, 1933).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1926
- maker
- Askania
- ID Number
- AG*MHI-P-7680
- catalog number
- MHI-P-7680
- accession number
- 230370
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Survey boat GRAND
- Description
- Grand is one of four boats used to survey the "ruggedest" 300 miles of the Colorado River's Grand Canyon during the 1923 expedition by the U.S. Geological Survey. Led by Col. Claude Birdseye, the expedition's primary purpose was to survey potential dam sites for the development of hydroelectric power. Indeed, the survey party mapped twenty-one new sites.
- Grand is eighteen feet long, with a beam of four feet, eleven inches. Heavily built of oak, spruce, and cedar, the boat weighs about 900 pounds. Grand is one of three boats ordered in 1921 by the survey's sponsors, the Edison Electric Company, and built at the Fellows and Stewart Shipbuilding Works in San Pedro. The vessels were patterned after those designed by the Kolb brothers, who had based their boats on vessels used by trappers in the upper Colorado River canyons.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1921
- associated date
- 1923
- associated institution
- US Geological Survey
- maker
- Fellows and Stewart Shipbuilding Works
- ID Number
- TR*034381
- catalog number
- 034381
- 34381
- accession number
- 71541
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Engine Room From Coast Guard Buoy Tender Oak
- Description
- This engine room is from the U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender Oak. The Oak was built for the U.S. Light House Bureau in 1921 by Consolidated Shipbuilding Corporation of Bronx, New York, and measured 160 feet long and 875 tons displacement. It was transferred to the U. S. Coast Guard in 1939, when that agency succeeded the Light House Bureau.
- Buoy tenders are known as the “Black Fleet” within the Coast Guard. Their hulls are painted black to hide the unavoidable scrapes and bumps from hauling buoys and channel markers. The spacious deck in the forward part of the ship was designed to carry buoys, concrete sinkers or anchors for buoys, mooring chain to attach the buoy to the concrete sinker, and other heavy material. The deck also provides work space for repair and maintenance of buoys.
- The engine that powered the Oak is a 750-horsepower, triple expansion, three-cylinder steam engine, capable of moving the vessel at a maximum speed of nine knots with a cruising range of 1,300 nautical miles. It drove a single propeller approximately 8 feet 6 inches in diameter. The engine is 18 feet in length, 6 feet wide, and 16 feet high, and weighs approximately 25 tons. It is representative of engines used in small, coastal vessels from approximately 1890 to 1930.
- For more than 40 years, in all kinds of weather, the Oak, its four officers and 23-man crew were responsible for setting, inspecting, repairing, and replacing hundreds of buoys, like the one in On The Water, that marked channels and shoals in and around New York Harbor, one of the world’s most important ports. In 1963, the Oak was transferred from the U. S. Coast Guard to the Smithsonian. The engine and radio room were removed from the Oak in 1971 and installed in the Museum in 1974.
- date made
- 1921
- ID Number
- 1979.0518.01
- accession number
- 1979.0518
- catalog number
- 1979.0518.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Berger Transit Theodolite
- Description
- C. L. Berger and Sons in Boston designed this instrument for use in cities and in bridge and tunnel construction. This example, serial number 14244, was made in 1923 and used by the Clayton Engineering Company in Clayton, Missouri.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1923
- maker
- C. L. Berger and Sons
- ID Number
- 2009.0079.01
- catalog number
- 2009.0079.01
- accession number
- 2009.0079
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Eötvös Torsion Balance
- Description
- Torsion balances are used to measure weak natural forces. Torsion balances generally consist of a straight rod with masses attached to each end, suspended from a wire. It is then encased in metal to isolate it from temperature or wind disturbance. All mass near or far has an influence on the rod, but the wire resists this force and twists in the opposite direction, producing through its twisting the measurements of the forces imposed upon it.
- Although torsion balances had been used for physics experiments since the 1780s, their development for geophysical purposes began with the Hungarian nobleman, Loránd (Roland) von Eötvös (1848– 1919), a professor of physics at the University of Budapest. An Eötvös torsion balance suitable for field work won an award at the international exposition held in Paris in 1900. Within a few years, several European scientists were using instruments of this sort for geodetic work (the study of measuring and representing the Earth), and Hugo de Boeck, director of the Hungarian Geological Survey, was urging that they be used for geological work as well. An Eötvös torsion balance was used in the first gravimetric survey for petroleum prospecting that occurred in the Egbell field in Slovakia in 1915 1916. The American prospector Everette De Golyer tried to obtain an Eötvös torsion balance at that time but the Great War stymied his efforts. De Golyer received his first torsion balances from Budapest in 1922.
- Eötvös' original torsion balance could determine the gravitational gradient in only one direction at a time. In 1906 he described a double instrument that consisted of two balances placed 180 degrees from one another, and that substantially shortened the time needed to determine the gravitational gradient. This example is of that sort. It was probably made by Ferdinand Süss, the artisan who made many instruments for Eötvös. The Eötvös Loránd Geophysical Institute in Budapest is active to this day.
- The Humble Oil & Refining Co. purchased this torsion balance from the Baron Von Eötvös Company in 1925, and sent Arnold Romberg, professor of physics at the University of Texas, at Austin, to Budapest to learn about it. Humble then used it for oil exploration on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana until the introduction of gravimeters in 1936.
- Ref: H. Shaw and E. Lancaster-Jones, "The Eötvös Torsion Balance," Proceedings of the Physical Society of London 35 (1923): 151-166.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1925
- ID Number
- AG*MHI-P-7679
- catalog number
- MHI-P-7679
- accession number
- 230370
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Wild Theodolite
- Description
- The "Universal Theodolite" that Heinrich Wild introduced in 1923, later known as the T2, incorporated a radically new design. It was also highly successful—about 100,000 of these instruments were eventually produced. This example is marked "Heinrich Wild Heerbrugg No. 218." Wild Heerbrugg, Inc. gave it to the Smithsonian in 1961, stating that it had had been delivered on April 12, 1924, and used until July 1960 in the Swiss Canton of Tessin. The serial number probably means that this is the 18th instrument of this sort made for the market.
- This Wild theodolite has a steel frame, and weighs only 9.5 pounds. The horizontal and vertical circles are glass, and read directly to single seconds. The telescope magnifies 24 times and, equipped with stadia wires, it can be used for tachymetry. An auxiliary eyepiece lying alongside the telescope allows the user to read either circle without moving away from the station. By a combination of internal optics, each reading gives the mean of two opposite points on the circles.
- Ref: Henry Wild's Universal Theodolite (Heerbrugg, about 1925).
- date made
- 1924
- maker
- Wild
- ID Number
- PH*319023
- catalog number
- 319023
- accession number
- 231959
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
- No Image Available
Hersey H.F. Water Meter
- Description
- This is a disc meter of the sort that the Hersey Manufacturing Company introduced in 1919. Hersey described it as a “positive displacement meter of the nutating type” that was “adapted for use on all services where extreme accuracy, reliability and durability are required and where general efficiency rather than first cost is of prime importance.” This example—a ⅝” meter with a capacity of 20 gallons per minute—was the smallest of three sizes made. The serial number (864,882) dates from 1920.
- Ref: Hersey Manufacturing Company, Hersey Disc Water Meter. Model H.F. Meter (July 1, 1926).
- date made
- 1920
- maker
- Hersey Manufacturing Company
- ID Number
- PH*325844
- accession number
- 245003
- catalog number
- 325844
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center