Measuring & Mapping

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.

This is a short-stem instrument designed for industrial use.
Description
This is a short-stem instrument designed for industrial use. The brass plate at the top of the V-shaped iron case is marked “HOHMANN & MAURER / 90 / FULTON ST / NEW YORK / 1121.” The brass housing around the mercury-in-glass thermometer is graduated, on one side, from 140 to 274 degrees Fahrenheit. The other side is marked “HOHMANN & MAURER / 90 / FULTON ST. NEW YORK” and has a scale from zero to 25, presumably for pressure in pounds per square inch. This was probably made in the mid-1880s, shortly after the firm began in business in New York City. It came to the Smithsonian in 1923.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1885
maker
Hohmann & Maurer
ID Number
PH.308161
catalog number
308161
accession number
70532
Heller & Brightly advertised this as an "Improved Complete Combined Transit and Leveling Instrument For Civil Engineers and Surveyors." This example is marked "Heller & Brightly Makers 5740 Philadelphia." The serial number indicates that it was made around 1884.
Description
Heller & Brightly advertised this as an "Improved Complete Combined Transit and Leveling Instrument For Civil Engineers and Surveyors." This example is marked "Heller & Brightly Makers 5740 Philadelphia." The serial number indicates that it was made around 1884. New, the basic transit cost $220. The vertical circle was an extra $25. The horizontal circle is silvered, graduated every 30 minutes of arc, and read by verniers at N and S to single minutes. There are level vials at N (this one covers a vernier) and at E. The vertical circle, also silvered, is read by vernier to single minutes, and is protected by an aluminum guard. To reduce weight, the vertical standards are ribbed and braced. The telescope is equipped with stadia wires for determining distances.
The tripod head of this transit allows the instrument to be leveled, and also to be adjusted horizontally in order to be brought over a fixed point on the ground. Daniel Hoffman obtained a patent (#197,369) on this design in 1877, and assigned the rights to Heller & Brightly in exchange for $5 for each unit sold.
Ref: Heller & Brightly, Remarks on Surveying Instruments (Philadelphia, 1886).
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1884
maker
Heller & Brightly
ID Number
PH.328726
catalog number
328726
accession number
275808
This solar compass belonged to the U. S. Geological Survey, a federal agency that was established in 1879. It was made around 1880, and transferred to the Smithsonian in 1920.
Description
This solar compass belonged to the U. S. Geological Survey, a federal agency that was established in 1879. It was made around 1880, and transferred to the Smithsonian in 1920. The horizontal circle is silvered, graduated to 30 minutes, and read by opposite verniers to single minutes. The inscription reads "W. & L. E. Gurley, Troy, N.Y." The auxiliary telescope, which attaches to either sight vane, is marked "PAT. JULY 9, 1878," and is described by the patent (#205,712) that was granted to William and Lewis E. Gurley in 1878.
Ref: W. & L. E. Gurley, Manual of the Principal Instruments used in American Engineering and Surveying (Troy, N. Y., 1878), p. 70.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1880
maker
W. & L. E. Gurley
ID Number
PH.307086
catalog number
307086
accession number
65070
Very delicate mercury-in-glass thermometer probably made in 1881. It has a blackened spherical bulb. The milk white back of the tube is marked “Tub. Non cyl div rectify. Syst.
Description
Very delicate mercury-in-glass thermometer probably made in 1881. It has a blackened spherical bulb. The milk white back of the tube is marked “Tub. Non cyl div rectify. Syst. Baudin (1881-8)” and “Centigrade 9014” and it carries a scale from -20 to +72 degrees, graduated in fifths. A cylindrical metal case protects the instrument from harm.
J. N. Baudin opened a shop in 1852, and his son, L. C. Baudin, was still in business at the turn of the century. In his report on the International Exhibition held in Vienna in 1883, an American scientist noted “Thermometers of extreme delicacy are also constructed by Baudin in Paris but I am unable to give either his address or list of prices. He constructs thermometers only to order, and his prices vary from twenty to fifty francs.”
Ref: Wolcott Gibbs, “Physical Apparatus and Chemical Materials Suitable for Scientific Research,” American Chemist 7 (1876): 147.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1881
maker
Baudin, L. C.
ID Number
PH.322764
catalog number
322764
accession number
251560
This telescope, with an achromatic objective, erecting eye piece, and brass tube covered with leather, was probably made in England. The "E. & G. W. Blunt, New York, Day & Night" inscription indicates that it was made between 1824 and 1868. The "U. S.
Description
This telescope, with an achromatic objective, erecting eye piece, and brass tube covered with leather, was probably made in England. The "E. & G. W. Blunt, New York, Day & Night" inscription indicates that it was made between 1824 and 1868. The "U. S. Navy" inscription suggests that it might have been used during the Civil War.
Edmund March Blunt (1770-1862) opened a nautical shop in New York in 1802. His sons, Edmund (1799-1866) and George William (1802-1878) opened their own shop in 1824, trading as E. & G. W. Blunt and offering nautical books, charts, and instruments. The firm became Blunt & Nichols in 1866, and Blunt & Co., in 1868.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
PH.322755
catalog number
322755
accession number
251009
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a cylindrical bulb.
Description
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a cylindrical bulb. The tube is graduated from -10.2 to 108.0 degrees (Centigrade?), and marked, in red, “Tonnelot à Paris (1884.5) 4289.” It is probably one of the very precise thermometers with a tube of extra-hard glass that was made by Tonnelot for the International Committee of Weights and Measures, tested at the Bureau International at Sèvres, and distributed to government organizations around the world.
Ref: J. A. Hall, “The International Temperature Scale Between 0 Degrees and 100 Degrees C,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 229 (1930): 1-48.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1884
maker
Tonnelot, Jules
ID Number
PH.317449
catalog number
317449
accession number
230396
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a spherical bulb. The milk-white back is marked “L. Golaz à Paris 725” and has a scale reading from -14 to +69 degrees centigrade, which seem to be done by hand rather than by machine.
Description
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a spherical bulb. The milk-white back is marked “L. Golaz à Paris 725” and has a scale reading from -14 to +69 degrees centigrade, which seem to be done by hand rather than by machine. The inscription indicates that this thermometer was made after 1891 (when Lucien Golaz took charge of the firm that his father had begun in 1830) and before the demise of the firm in 1919.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1870-1888
ca 1891-1919
maker
L. Golaz
ID Number
PH.317446
catalog number
317446
accession number
230396
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a cylindrical bulb. The back of the stem is milk glass. The clear front is marked "J. & H. J. Green. N.Y. No. 734" and graduated every degree Fahrenheit from -40 to +125.
Description
Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a cylindrical bulb. The back of the stem is milk glass. The clear front is marked "J. & H. J. Green. N.Y. No. 734" and graduated every degree Fahrenheit from -40 to +125. James Green worked in partnership with his nephew Henry between 1879 and 1885.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1879-1885
maker
J. & H. J. Green
ID Number
PH.317443
accession number
230396
catalog number
317443
Alcohol-in-glass Rutherford-type thermometer. The back of the stem is milk glass. The clear front is marked "J. & H. J. Green. N.Y." and "Signal Service U.S. Army No. 14" and graduated every degree Fahrenheit from -90 to +135.
Description
Alcohol-in-glass Rutherford-type thermometer. The back of the stem is milk glass. The clear front is marked "J. & H. J. Green. N.Y." and "Signal Service U.S. Army No. 14" and graduated every degree Fahrenheit from -90 to +135. It was made between 1879 and 1885 (when James Green worked in partnership with his nephew Henry).
John Rutherford, a Scottish country doctor, devised this form in 1790. Green stated in 1900 that it was "the only one in general use." It has a black index inside the tube. "On a decrease of temperature the alcohol recedes, taking with it the glass index; on an increase of temperature the alcohol alone ascends the tube, leaving the end of the index farthest from the bulb indicating the minimum temperature."
Ref.: Henry J. Green, Meteorological and Scientific Instruments (Brooklyn, 1900), p. 23.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1879-1885
maker
J. & H. J. Green
ID Number
PH.317467
accession number
230396
catalog number
317467
A paper label on this seismograph reads “Made from the Designs of Professor Ewing of Dundee, by the California Electric Works, 35 Market street, San Francisco; and recommended for use in California by Professor LeConte of Berkeley and by Professor Holden, Director of the Lick Obs
Description
A paper label on this seismograph reads “Made from the Designs of Professor Ewing of Dundee, by the California Electric Works, 35 Market street, San Francisco; and recommended for use in California by Professor LeConte of Berkeley and by Professor Holden, Director of the Lick Observatory.”
James Alfred Ewing was a young Scottish physicist/engineer who, while teaching in Tokyo in the years between 1878 and 1883, designed several seismographs. Among these was a duplex pendulum instrument that recorded the two horizontal components of earthquakes. It was, he claimed, “comparatively cheap and simple” and was “employed by many private observers in Japan.”
The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company in England began manufacturing Ewing’s several seismographs in 1886. The first examples in the United States were installed in the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton and in the University of California at Berkeley. Edward Holden was then director of the former and president of the latter, and Joseph LeConte was professor of geology at Berkeley.
Enthusiastic about the new science of seismology, Holden and LeConte convinced Paul Seiler, head of an electrical apparatus supply firm in San Francisco, to manufacture duplex pendulum seismographs that would sell for $15 apiece (rather than the $75 charged by the English firm). Over a dozen examples are known to have been distributed across the country and around the world, some recording earthquakes as early as 1889. This one came to the Smithsonian in 1964, a gift of Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio.
Ref: Edward S. Holden, Handbook of the Lick Observatory (San Francisco, 1888), pp. 54-56.
Edward S. Holden and Joseph LeConte, “Use of the Ewing Duplex Seismometer” (1887), reprinted in Holden, “Earthquakes on the Pacific Coast,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 1087 (1898).
Location
Currently not on view
date made
late 1880s
maker
California Electrical Works
ID Number
PH.323669
catalog number
323669
accession number
251332
This 56-hour chronometer has a later pattern Earnshaw spring detent escapement, and indications for hours, minutes, seconds, and up and down. It dates from around 1880.
Description
This 56-hour chronometer has a later pattern Earnshaw spring detent escapement, and indications for hours, minutes, seconds, and up and down. It dates from around 1880. The inscriptions read "William Bond & Son, Boston" and "Bond's Break Circuit." The movement, like that of most Bond chronometers, was probably made in England, while the Bond break circuit mechanism was made in the U.S. The Department of Physics at Columbia University donated this instrument to the Smithsonian. The winding key is marked "512" and thus from a different piece.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca. 1880
maker
William Bond & Son
ID Number
2001.0162.01
catalog number
2001.0162.01
accession number
2001.0162
This watch belonged to Sir Sandford Fleming, chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Description
This watch belonged to Sir Sandford Fleming, chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway. About 1880, Fleming devised a plan for worldwide time zones and had a complicated watch made to reflect both zoned time and local time.
The maker of Fleming's watch is the London firm of Nicole, Nielsen & Co. Successor to a business founded by Swiss immigrants Adolphe Nicole and Jules Capt in the late 1830s, the firm made high-quality timepieces. Fleming ordered the watch through retailer E. White, also of London.
Fleming's first notions about time reform emerged on a trip to Ireland in 1876, when he missed a train because he misread a timetable. His initial plan concentrated on replacing the two twelve-hour designations of the day, A.M. and P.M., with a twenty-four hour system. Almost immediately, though, he expanded his ideas about time reform to propose a system he called variously "Terrestrial Time," "Cosmopolitan Time," and "Cosmic Time"-a division of the globe into twenty-four zones, each one hour apart and identified by letters of the alphabet.
As the 1880s began there was no binding international agreement about how to keep time for the world. Traditionally, each country used its own capital city or main observatory for measuring time and designating lines of longitude on national maps. After publication of the British Nautical Almanac began in 1767, many nations came to use Greenwich time for navigation and some scientific observations. Local mean time served for all other activities.
Added emphasis on Greenwich had come from North America when the railroads there voluntarily adopted a standard zoned time in 1883. In that system, the zones were based on meridians counted west from Greenwich, England, at zero degree of longitude.
Fleming was not the first or only proponent of world standard time. Quirico Filopanti, an Italian mathematics and engineering professor, for example, published a scheme based on twenty-four zones counted from Rome as prime meridian in 1858.
Organized international support emerged slowly for fixing a common prime meridian. Not until October 1884 did diplomats and technical specialists gather to act on scientific proposals. The International Meridian Conference, held in Washington, DC, recommended that the nations of the world establish a prime meridian at Greenwich, count longitude east and west from the prime meridian up to 180 degrees in each direction, and adopt a universal day beginning at Greenwich at midnight. Although the International Meridian Conference had no authority to enforce its suggestions, the meeting resulted in the gradual worldwide adoption of a time-zone based system with Greenwich as zero degrees.
The military and some civilian science, aviation and navigation efforts still use alphabet identifiers for time zones. The time of day in Zone Z is known as "Zulu Time." The zone is governed by the zero degree of longitude that runs through Greenwich.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
ca 1880
maker
Nicole, Nielsen & Co.
ID Number
1990.0659.01
catalog number
1990.0659.01
accession number
1990.0659
William Gunn Price, an employee of the U.S. Engineer Department, designed an exceptionally robust and successful water current meter. This example is the instrument that Gunn, with the aid of four mechanics, built in 1882.
Description
William Gunn Price, an employee of the U.S. Engineer Department, designed an exceptionally robust and successful water current meter. This example is the instrument that Gunn, with the aid of four mechanics, built in 1882. It has a five-conical bucket wheel mounted on a vertical-axis, and a four-blade rudder. It is 30.5 inches long. Gunn was living at Paducah, Ky., at that time, and used this meter on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The U.S. Geological Survey transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1916.
Ref: Arthur H. Frazier, William Gunn Price and the Price Current Meters (Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 40.
Arthur H. Frazier, Water Current Meters in the Smithsonian Collections of the National Museum of History and Technology (Washington, D.C., 1974), pp. 78-87.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1882
ID Number
PH.289638
accession number
59263
catalog number
289638
In 1854, in the interest of safety and economy, the British Parliament authorized the establishment of a uniform system of meteorological observations at sea and the formation of a Meteorological Office within the Board of Trade.
Description
In 1854, in the interest of safety and economy, the British Parliament authorized the establishment of a uniform system of meteorological observations at sea and the formation of a Meteorological Office within the Board of Trade. Under the leadership of Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the Met Office issued a call for a barometer suitable for use by the Royal Navy. Patrick Adie got the contract, and the Kew Observatory tested each barometer before it was sent out. Matthew F. Maury, director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, reported in 1855 that he had ordered many barometers of this sort for the U.S. Navy.
This example is marked “ADIE, LONDON No 1711” and “SIGNAL SERVICE U.S. ARMY For Comparison of Barometers for International Simultaneous Meteorological Reports.” It may have been acquired by the Signal Service soon after the start of a weather service in 1870; it was last calibrated by the Weather Bureau in 1970.
Ref.: Sara Dry, “Fishermen and Forecasts: How Barometers Helped Make the Meteorological Department Safer in Victorian Britain,” Center for Analysis of Risk and Regulation Discussion Paper 46 (2007).
M.F. Maury, Explanation and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts (Philadelphia, 1855), p. 639.
Report of the Chief Signal Officer to the Secretary of War for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1881, p. 1128.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1854-1886
maker
Adie, Patrick
ID Number
PH.333823
accession number
304553
catalog number
333823
This sextant has a brass frame, and a silvered scale graduated every 10 minutes from -5° to +180° and read by vernier with tangent screw and swinging magnifier to 10 seconds of arc. The inscriptions read "Stackpole & Brother New York" and "2258."Ref: Deborah J.
Description
This sextant has a brass frame, and a silvered scale graduated every 10 minutes from -5° to +180° and read by vernier with tangent screw and swinging magnifier to 10 seconds of arc. The inscriptions read "Stackpole & Brother New York" and "2258."
Ref: Deborah J. Warner, "American Octants and Sextants: The Early Years," Rittenhouse 3 (1989): 86-112, on 108-109.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1880
maker
Stackpole & Brother
ID Number
PH.335211
accession number
317998
catalog number
335211
Eugene Elwin Haskell graduated from Cornell University in 1879 and spent a few years with the U.S. Lake Survey. He then joined the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and was assigned the task of plotting the currents in New York Harbor. Working with Edward S.
Description
Eugene Elwin Haskell graduated from Cornell University in 1879 and spent a few years with the U.S. Lake Survey. He then joined the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and was assigned the task of plotting the currents in New York Harbor. Working with Edward S. Ritchie, a leading navigational instrument maker in Massachusetts, Haskell developed a horizontal-axis, screw-type current meter with a direction-indicating facility, the results of which could be read electrically. By 1888, the Survey was favoring the Ritchie-Haskell form, noting that these new meters “combine, in one instrument, a means of registering by electricity the velocity of a current and the direction of its flow” and that the “registration is made on the vessels deck without removing the instrument from the water.”
This example is marked “E.S. Ritchie & Sons, Brookline, Mass. U.S.A.” The National Bureau of Standards, the organization that calibrated current meters for federal agencies and engineers in private practice, transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1959.
Ref: E. E. Haskell, “Ship’s Log,” U.S. Patent 384362 (1888).
Report of the Superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for the Fiscal Year Ending June 1888 (Washington, D.C., 1889), p. 37.
“The Ritchie-Haskell Direction-Current Meter,” Engineering News 33 (1895): 27-28.
Arthur H. Frazier, Water Current Meters in the Smithsonian Collections of the National Museum of History and Technology (Washington, D.C., 1974), pp. 64-67.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
after 1888
maker
E. S. Ritchie & Sons
ID Number
PH.316590
accession number
225869
catalog number
316590
This is the model that accompanied William Thomson's 1880 application for an American patent for an improved mariner’s compass. The U.S. Patent Office transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1926. This compass has eight short magnetic needles suspended by threads.
Description
This is the model that accompanied William Thomson's 1880 application for an American patent for an improved mariner’s compass. The U.S. Patent Office transferred it to the Smithsonian in 1926. This compass has eight short magnetic needles suspended by threads. The card is relatively large, but its central part is cut away. The binnacle has large iron balls designed to compensate for the magnetism of the ship itself. Thomson claimed that his design offered five advantages: greater steadiness of the compass card and diminished wear of the bearings; greater steadiness of the compass in vessels of war during gun-fire; improved method of applying correctors for the semicircular error; improved auxiliary instruments to correct the heeling error; and improved compass card. The inscription reads "SIR WM THOMSON’S PATENT. J. WHITE, MAKER GLASGOW."
Ref: W. Thomson, "Mariner's Compass," U.S. Patent #232,718.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1880
maker
J. White
ID Number
PH.308557
accession number
89797
catalog number
308557
patent number
232,781
Alcohol-in-glass Rutherford-type thermometer mounted on a brass plate marked "J. & H. J. GREEN NEW YORK" and "YALE MIN. STD. MAY 1881. CORNING GLASS, SQUIBBS ETHER" and "SIGNAL SERVICE U.S. ARMY No. 3." The plate is graduated every 5 degrees F. from 0 to +250.
Description
Alcohol-in-glass Rutherford-type thermometer mounted on a brass plate marked "J. & H. J. GREEN NEW YORK" and "YALE MIN. STD. MAY 1881. CORNING GLASS, SQUIBBS ETHER" and "SIGNAL SERVICE U.S. ARMY No. 3." The plate is graduated every 5 degrees F. from 0 to +250. The back of the stem is milk white. The clear front is graduated (but not numbered) every degree from 0 to +250.
John Rutherford, a Scottish country doctor, devised this form in 1790. Green stated in 1900 that it was "the only one in general use." It has a black index inside the tube. "On a decrease of temperature the alcohol recedes, taking with it the glass index; on an increase of temperature the alcohol alone ascends the tube, leaving the end of the index farthest from the bulb indicating the minimum temperature."
Ref.: Henry J. Green, Meteorological and Scientific Instruments (Brooklyn, 1900), p. 23.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1879-1885
maker
J. & H. J. Green
ID Number
PH.328772
accession number
277511
catalog number
328772
The Peoria Watch Co., Peoria, Ill., made this high-grade watch. The movement is marked with the company’s name and serial number 17672.
Description
The Peoria Watch Co., Peoria, Ill., made this high-grade watch. The movement is marked with the company’s name and serial number 17672. The dial indicates the watch could be used for railroad timekeeping, where the most reliable watches and clocks were fundamental to safe and efficient operation. The definition of a railroad watch changed over time and varied among railroad companies in the nineteenth century, but by about 1920 generally accepted, closely specified standards governed almost every detail of watch construction for railway use.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1887
manufacturer
Peoria Watch Co.
ID Number
1982.0518.001
catalog number
1982.0518.001
accession number
1982.0518
serial number
17672
In 1880, Scientific American enthusiastically recommended Louis P. Juvet's time globe to its readers.
Description
In 1880, Scientific American enthusiastically recommended Louis P. Juvet's time globe to its readers. It was, the magazine found, "a fit ornament for any library, a valuable adjunct in every business office, and a necessity in every institution of learning." The clockwork-driven globe was undeniably useful for studying geography, determining world time, and illustrating the rotation of the earth. The basis of its appeal, however, was even broader. Prominently displayed in the parlors and drawing rooms of Gilded Age America, the elegant time globe clearly demonstrated the wealth and culture of its owner.
Available in a range of sizes and versions simple and ornate, the time globe consisted of three basic elements: a globe, a mechanism for rotating it, and a base. The globe most often featured a terrestrial map, but celestial globes were also offered. An equatorial ring indicated worldwide time and zones of daylight and darkness. A meridian ring supported a clock dial over the north pole.
Concealed within the globe was a four-day, spring-driven brass movement that drove the clock dial and rotated the globe once every twenty-four hours. Manufactured for Juvet by Rood and Horton of Bristol, Connecticut, the movements featured a lever escapement and a balance wheel. Turning the feather end of the arrow-shaped axis wound the movement.
Precisely when production of the globes began is uncertain. Juvet, a Swiss immigrant and a resident of Glens Falls, New York, first patented a mechanical globe in January 1867, and exhibited one at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. Probably sometime in 1879, Juvet formed a partnership with James Arkell. By the early 1880s, Juvet and Company of Canajoharie, New York, was making more than sixty varieties of globes. In October 1886, fire consumed the factory where the globes were assembled, ending their manufacture there forever.
Pictured on the left. Overall measurements are 55 1/2 x 17 x 17 inches.
Location
Currently not on view (stand)
Currently not on view
Date made
ca 1885
manufacturer
Juvet & Co.
ID Number
ME.308472
catalog number
308472
accession number
93248
The inscriptions on the face of this barometer read “J. & H. J. GREEN / NEW YORK” and “JAS PITKIN / Maker / LONDON / COMPENSATED” and “U.S.G.S. No 181.” They indicate a date between 1879 and 1885 when James and Henry J. Green were working in partnership. The U.S.
Description
The inscriptions on the face of this barometer read “J. & H. J. GREEN / NEW YORK” and “JAS PITKIN / Maker / LONDON / COMPENSATED” and “U.S.G.S. No 181.” They indicate a date between 1879 and 1885 when James and Henry J. Green were working in partnership. The U.S. Geological Survey was established in 1879.
The pressure scale around the circumference of the face reads from 20 to 31 inches of mercury; the altitude scale reads from zero to 12,000 feet.
James Pitkin received a British provisional patent (#2947) for “Improvements in Aneroid Barometers” in 1861. In 1870, together with Thomas W. Short, his partner at that time, he brought out an Illustrated Catalogue of Aneroid Barometers.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1879-1885
retailer
J. & H. J. Green
maker
Pitkin, James
ID Number
PH.247925
catalog number
247925
accession number
47736
Simple mercury-in-glass thermometer with a brass scale housed in a maple case suitable for hanging on the wall. The scale is graduated in degrees from -40 to +150. and marked "C.J. Tagliabue Mfg. Co. Bklyn. N.Y. Made in U.S.A."Currently not on view
Description
Simple mercury-in-glass thermometer with a brass scale housed in a maple case suitable for hanging on the wall. The scale is graduated in degrees from -40 to +150. and marked "C.J. Tagliabue Mfg. Co. Bklyn. N.Y. Made in U.S.A."
Location
Currently not on view
date made
after 1885
maker
C. J. Tagliabue Manufacturing Company
ID Number
PH.335521
catalog number
335521
accession number
321714
Daniel C. Draper (1841-1931) studied at New York University (with a PhD in 1880), apprenticed with the Novelty Iron Works, and served for many years as Director of the New York Meteorological Observatory in Central Park.
Description
Daniel C. Draper (1841-1931) studied at New York University (with a PhD in 1880), apprenticed with the Novelty Iron Works, and served for many years as Director of the New York Meteorological Observatory in Central Park. In the 1880s he established the Draper Manufacturing Co., to produce registering meteorological instruments based on his designs.
This example is marked "DRAPER'S SELF-RECORDING THERMOMETER 152 FRONT ST. N.Y. CITY PATENTED 1887." It is a bimetallic instrument with a flat chart (missing) that revolves once a week.
Ref: Daniel Draper, “Recording Thermometer,” U.S. Patent 369,170 (1887), assigned to the Draper Manufacturing Co.
Daniel Draper, “Recording-Thermometer,” U.S. Patent 369,171 (1887), assigned to the Draper Manufacturing Co.
“Dr. Daniel Draper’s Contributions to Meteorology,” Scientific American 42 (Jan. 3, 1880): 2-3.
“Dr. Daniel Draper, Weather Man, Dead,” New York Times (Dec. 22, 1931), p. 28.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1887
maker
Draper Manufacturing Co.
ID Number
PH.316942
catalog number
316942
accession number
229396
Date made
c1882
ca 1882
associated person
Edison, Thomas Alva
maker
Bergmann & Co.
ID Number
EM.331146
accession number
294351
catalog number
331146
collector/donor number
20-03

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