This water meter, with an iron case marked “WORTHINGTON” and serial number 55,542, was probably made in Brooklyn in the late nineteenth century. The inscription refers to Henry R. Worthington (1817-1880), a New York inventor and manufacturer who specialized in pumps and other hydraulic machinery, and whose duplex-piston water meter (covered by U.S. Patent 13,320 of July 24, 1855) was the first successful water meter made in the United States. Scientific American reported in 1880 that over 20,000 Worthington water meters were in daily use, the form having “been adopted by all the principal water works in the United States and Canada.” The original form was still on the market at the turn of the century.
Ref: “American Industries. No. 55. The Manufacture of Pumping Engines and Water Meters,” Scientific American 43 (1880): 149.
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