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 661 items.
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Thomas Earnshaw Box Chronometer
- Description
- This instrument is a specialized timekeeper for finding longitude at sea. Thomas Earnshaw made this chronometer in England about 1798. It became part of the James Arthur Collection at New York University, and the university donated a portion of the collection, including this chronometer, to the Smithsonian in 1984.
- To find longitude at sea, a chronometer was set to the time of a place of known longitude, like Greenwich, England. That time, carried to a remote location, could be compared to local time. Because one hour of difference in time equals 15 degrees difference in longitude, the difference in time between the chronometer and local time would yield local longitude. The instruments require careful handling to keep precise time. Although the original box for this instrument has not survived, most chronometers are fitted in a wooden box in a gimbal to remain level and compensate for the movement of a ship at sea.
- Thomas Earnshaw (1749-1829) was a pioneer in chronometer development. He is credited with introducing to chronometer design two important features that became standard parts of the timekeeper in the 19th century—the detached detent escapement and, independently of his rival John Arnold, the bimetallic compensation balance. His simplifications permitted others to undertake batch production of chronometers, and his work received an award of £2500 from Britain’s Longitude Board in 1805.
- Mechanism details:
- Escapement: Earnshaw spring detent
- Duration: 1 day
- Power source: Spring drive with chain and fuse
- Balance spring: helical, blued steel
- Balance: Earnshaw, two-arm
- Inscription: “Thos. Earnshaw / Inv. Et Fecit No. 451” on back plate
- Barrel bridge possibly a replacement
- Dial details:
- Engraved and silvered brass
- Indicates hours, minutes, seconds
- Inscription: “Thos. Earnshaw / INVT. ET FACIT /No. 451” on dial
- Blued steel lunette hands (minute hand is a replacement)
- Brass bowl; screwed and milled bezel; convex and chamfered crystal
- No box
- No winding key
- References:
- 1. Mercer, Tony. Chronometer Makers of the World. Essex: NAG Press and Tony Mercer, 1991.
- 2. Thompson, David. Clocks. London: British Museum Press, 2005.
- 3. Whitney, Marvin E. The Ship’s Chronometer. Cincinnati: American Watchmakers Institute Press, 1985.
- date made
- ca 1798
- maker
- Earnshaw, Thomas
- ID Number
- 1984.0416.013
- accession number
- 1984.0416
- catalog number
- 1984.0416.013
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
John Roger Arnold Box Chronometer
- Description
- This instrument, made by John Roger Arnold about 1825, is a specialized timekeeper for finding longitude at sea. The chronometer was part of the James Arthur Collection at New York University, and the university donated a portion of the collection, including the chronometer, to the Smithsonian in 1984.
- To find longitude at sea, a chronometer was set to the time of a place of known longitude, like Greenwich, England. That time, carried to a remote location, could be compared to local time. Because one hour of difference in time equals 15 degrees difference in longitude, the difference in time between the chronometer and local time would yield local longitude. The instruments require careful handling to keep precise time. Although the original box for this instrument has not survived, most chronometers are fitted in a wooden box in a gimbal to remain level and compensate for the movement of a ship at sea.
- John Roger Arnold (1769-1843) learned watchmaking from his father, chronometer pioneer John Arnold, and Abraham Louis Breguet. The Arnolds were in business as Arnold & Son between 1787 and 1799, when the father died. In 1805 John Roger Arnold accepted the English Board of Longitude’s posthumous award to his father for improvements to the marine chronometer, which included simplifications that permitted others to undertake batch production of chronometers—a detached escapement, a helical balance spring and a temperature-compensated balance. The younger Arnold continued the business and between 1830 and 1840 took in partner Edward John Dent. In that decade, the firm made about 600 chronometers.
- Mechanism details:
- Escapement: Arnold, spring detent
- Duration: 8-day
- Power source: Spring drive with chain and fusee
- Balance spring: helical, blued steel
- Balance: J. R. Arnold with built-in aux. comp. Patented in 1821 (#4531)
- Inscription: "Jn. R. Arnold _ London. Invt et Fecit No 491" on backplate
- Dial details:
- Engraved and silvered brass
- Indicates hours, minutes, seconds
- Inscription: “ARNOLD. / London / No 491" on dial
- Blued steel spade hands
- Brass bowl; bayonet-fitted bezel; convex, plain crystal
- No box
- No winding key, sprung dust cover over winding work
- References:
- 1. Gould, Rupert T. The Marine Chronometer. London: Holland Press, 1960.
- 2. Mercer, Tony. Chronometer Makers of the World. Essex: NAG Press, 1991.
- 3. Mercer, Vaudrey. John Arnold & Son, Chronometer Makers, 1762-1843. London: The Antiquarian Horological Society, 1972.
- 4. Mercer, Vaudrey. The Life and Letters of Edward John Dent, Chronometer Maker and some account of his Successors. London: The Antiquarian Horological Society, 1977.
- 5. Whitney, Marvin E. The Ship's Chronometer. Cincinnati: American Watchmakers Institute Press, 1985.
- date made
- ca 1825
- maker
- John Roger Arnold
- ID Number
- 1984.0416.014
- accession number
- 1984.0416
- catalog number
- 1984.0416.014
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Juvet Time Globe
- 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 right. Overall measurements are 51 x 17 x 15 in..
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1880
- manufacturer
- Juvet & Co.
- ID Number
- 1984.0416.076
- catalog number
- 1984.0416.076
- accession number
- 1984.0416
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
B. K. Hagger & Son Surveyor's Compass
- Description
- This compass has an outkeeper on the north arm, and a level vial on each arm. The "B. K. Hagger & Son Makers, Baltimore" refers to a firm that did business during the period 1824-1838. It belonged to Baldwin University (later Baldwin-Wallace College) in Berea, Ohio.
- maker
- B. K. Hagger & Son
- ID Number
- 1985.0386.02
- accession number
- 1985.0386
- catalog number
- 1985.0386.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Potts Surveyor's Vernier Compass
- Description
- William Lukens Potts (1771-1854) worked with Benjamin Rittenhouse in the years 1796-1798, making plain and vernier compasses. In 1800, now in business on his own, he advertised "surveying instruments of all kinds, and Rittenhouse' Circumferentors, with each a nounes and spirit level compleat." "Nounes" here refers to a nonius, a term sometimes used in place of vernier.
- This example is marked "W.L. POTTS Bucks Penna." It was made between 1807, when Potts bought land in Bucks County, Pa., and 1817, when he moved to Philadelphia. It has a variation arc on the south arm that extends 15 degrees either way; the "folded" vernier is moved by rack and pinion, and reads to 5 minutes. There is a spirit level on the north arm. A copy of Thomas Whitney's 1814 discussion of "The Variation of the Compass" is pasted into the inside cover of the wooden box.
- date made
- 1807-1817
- maker
- Potts, William Lukens
- ID Number
- 1985.0468.01
- accession number
- 1985.0468
- catalog number
- 1985.0468.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
USS Porpoise
- Description
- One of six ships of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, the Porpoise sailed around the world between 1838 and 1842 under the command of Lt. Cadwallader Ringgold. The four-year-long expedition, headed by Lt. Charles Wilkes, covered nearly 87,000 miles, including a full circumnavigation of the globe. Wilkes and his crew sighted Antarctica (proving its existence), charted hundreds of Pacific islands and surveyed the Columbia River in present-day Oregon.
- This model was built in the 1980s by Dr. William Brown for an exhibition about the U.S. Exploring Expedition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
- ID Number
- 1985.0485.01
- accession number
- 1985.0485
- catalog number
- 1985.0485.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Houghton Common Theodolite
- Description
- This is an example of the "new theodolate" for which Rowland Houghton (about 1678-1744), a Boston mechanic, received a patent from the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts in 1735. This was the second patent for a mechanical invention issued in the British colonies of North America. The patent did not describe Houghton's instrument, but stated simply that it was designed "for surveying of lands, with suitable instruments, with greater ease and dispatch than any surveying instrument heretofore projected or made within this province." The only other contemporary reference to this instrument appears in Houghton's 1737 advertisement for aqueducts, which states that "Said Houghton has lately improv'd on his new Theodolate (sic), by which the art of Surveying is rendered more plain & easy than heretofore."
- The horizontal circle is graduated to degrees and numbered in quadrants. One side is also numbered from VI to XII to VI, as for a sundial. The sight vanes for the alidade are missing. The compass card—marked "J. R. LINCOLN, BOSTON”—is a 19th-century replacement.
- When the Smithsonian acquired this instrument, it was the only known surviving example. Another example, however, has recently come to light.
- Ref: Silvio Bedini, "Rowland Houghton's 'New Theodolate,'" Rittenhouse 1 (1987): 30-39.
- Raymond V. Giordano, "Some Notes on the Two Extant Rowland Houghton New Theodolates," Rittenhouse 15 (2001): 93-97.
- maker
- Houghton, Rowland
- ID Number
- 1985.0860.01
- accession number
- 1985.0860
- catalog number
- 1985.0860.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
William Ellery model Pocketwatch
- Description
- During the Civil War Army physician Dr. G. D. O'Farrell received this watch as a gift from grateful patients.
- In the 1850s watchmakers at what would become the American Watch Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, developed the world's first machine-made watches. They completely redesigned the watch so that its movement could be assembled from interchangeable parts made on specialized machines invented just for that purpose. They also developed a highly organized factory-based work system to speed production and cut costs.
- In its first decade, the firm's work was largely experimental and the firm's finances were unsteady. The name of the company changed repeatedly as investors came and went. Operations moved from Roxbury to Waltham in 1854, and the Panic of 1857 brought bankruptcy and a new owner, Royal Robbins. Reorganization and recovery began, and output reached fourteen thousand watches in 1858.
- Renamed the American Watch Company the next year, the firm was on the brink of success from an unexpected quarter. During the Civil War, Waltham's watch factory designed and mass-produced a low-cost watch, the William Ellery model. Selling for an unbelievable $13.00, these watches became a fad with Union soldiers. Just as itinerant peddlers had aroused the desire for inexpensive clocks, roving merchants sold thousands of cheap watches to eager customers in wartime encampments. By 1865, the year the war ended, William Ellery movements represented almost 45 per cent of Waltham's unit sales.
- This William Ellery model watch was a gift to Army surgeon G. D. O'Farrell from his patients at White Hall, a Civil War hospital near Philadelphia. The inscription on the dust cover of O'Farrell's watch reads: "White Hall USA Gen'l Hospital, Feb. 15, 1865 Presented to Dr. G. D. O'Farrell, USA by the patients of Ward C as a token of regard & respect for his ability as a surgeon and unswerving integrity as a man."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1864
- presentation
- 1865
- maker
- American Waltham Watch Co.
- ID Number
- 1987.0853.01
- catalog number
- 1987.0853.01
- accession number
- 1987.0853
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Heisely Surveyor's Vernier Compass
- Description
- This compass is marked "F. Heiseley Fredk: town." The variation arc on the south arm extends 14 degrees to either side; the vernier is moved by hand, and reads to 6 minutes. The bottom plate is not solid, as was usually the case, but has six large segments cut out, presumably to save brass and/or reduce the weight of the instrument. The compass face reads clockwise--a feature that was probably introduced at the behest of the surveyor for whom the compass was made. Heisely also made compasses with the more common counterclockwise form. The level vials on the north and south arms, the needle, and one of the sight vanes seem to be later additions.
- Frederick Heisely (1759-1843) was a clock and compass maker of German descent who catered to the community of rich German American farmers in the mid-Atlantic region. He apprenticed with John G. Hoff, a clock maker born and trained in Germany. He served in the Revolutionary War, married Hoff's eldest daughter, and opened a shop in Frederick (then called Fredericktown), Md., in the mid-1780s. He moved to Harrisburg, Pa., in 1811.
- Ref: Silvio A. Bedini, "Frederick Heisely: Clock and Compass Maker," Rittenhouse 3 (1989):120-124.
- maker
- Heisely, Frederick
- ID Number
- 1988.0793.01
- accession number
- 1988.0793
- catalog number
- 1988.0793.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Sir Sandford Fleming's Pocketwatch
- 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
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center