
Figure 10.—LarGE PRICE CURRENT METER (35 inches long), model no, 375 in Gurley’s early 
catalogs. (USNM cat. no. 311708; Smithsonian photo 44538-D.) 

Gurley accepted the offer and that by July 1885 they 
had begun handling whatever orders for meters Price 
received. In fact, they seem to have taken over the 
remaining supply (about 4 or 5) of the 16 meters that 
Price had manufactured up to that time and sold 
them for him. 
A common criticism of the early Ellis meters was 
that they were too fragile for use on large rivers. 
In his meters Price had attempted to combat that 
criticism by making them much larger and far more 
rugged than the 18-inch Ellis meters. His original 
meter was a little over 32 inches Jong. Gurley’s 
first production model (their catalog no. 375) was 
even longer—35 inches. Both were made of much 
heavier materials than were the Ellis meters. Price’s 
theory seems to have been that large rivers required 
large current meters, and the first models built by 
both Price and Gurley complied with that theory. 
Before Gurley’s first production lot of the no. 375 
current meters was completed, Price decided that a 
smaller meter might be easier to handle when meas- 
uring small streams. When, therefore, the Gurley 
firm introduced its new line of Price meters in 1887, 
that line consisted of two models (figs. 10 and 11)— 
the 35-inch model with a 7!s-inch-diameter impeller 
(catalog no. 375) and a 24-inch model with a 6-inch- 
50 BULLETIN 252: 
Figure 11.—Larce PRICE CURRENT 
METER (24 inches long), model no. 
376 in Gurley’s early catalogs but 
no. 600 in later ones. (USNM 
cat. no. 289642; Smithsonian photo 
44538-G.) 
diameter impeller (catalog no. 376). In both in- 
stances, the impellers had five cups. 
Between the years 1887 and 1896, when a change in 
Gurley’s model-numbering system went into effect, 
that firm sold 45 Price current meters, 19 of which 
were of the larger size (catalog no. 375), and 26 of 
which were of the smaller size. Of the large meters, 
14 were sold to the Corps of Engineers, 1 to Columbia 
College School of Mines, New York City, and 4 were 
sold in Canada. 
Influences of Irrigation and of The 
U.S. Geological Survey 
Two circumstances appear to have had a strong in- 
fluence on the design and construction of Price’s next 
current meter, his Acoustic model: the intense interest 
in irrigation that had arisen, particularly in Colorado, 
Nebraska, and California, and the advent of stream 
gaging as one of the functions of the United States 
Geological Survey. 
Edwin S. Nettleton, a graduate of Oberlin College, 
Ohio, who was serving his apprenticeship as a civil 
engineer under Zacharia Dane, was among those who 
heeded Horace Greeley’s slogan, “Go West, young 
man, and grow up with the country.” Nettleton 
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 
