A brass and mahogany Waywiser, banded in iron
The brass dial signed by Troughton, London (ca. 1800), with scrollwork steel hands and the Roman numerals wax-filled black.
50 ½” tall; 32” wheel with six spokes; 7 ¾” dial.
The waywiser — also called a way-wiser, a perambulator or a surveyor’s wheel — is a tool for measuring distance traveled. Derived from the sense of “wise” as “to show the way” (the name historically also referred to way-posts), the waywiser converts the circular motion of the wheel into linear (or curvilinear) distances. Using clockwork — indeed, the main gauge of miles is in 12 — the power to revolve the hands is generated by the user pushing the wheel rather than by weights under gravity. Used on a reasonably flat surface such as a road, it can give quite accurate — though generally longer than surveyed distances, as one would expect — indications of distances. The earliest attestation in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1651 (in Hartlib’s Legacie), and the subsequent quotations indicate that it could be used to measure how many steps a person has taken in a day (Ward’s diary, 1679) and even the distance covered by a coach (Evelyn’s diary, 1684), thus making it the precursor to pedometers — now seemingly ubiquitous in smart-phones — and odometers.
With its solid mahogany wheel banded with iron and solid mahogany frame, our waywiser is both luxurious and intended for use — although the condition indicates that it was very little used. The firm of Troughton, which became Troughton & Simms in 1826 (a firm terminus post quem non) and Cooke, Troughton & Simms in 1922 (closed 1988, subsumed into Vickers Instruments), in London began as a maker of orreries. When the Board of Ordnance began its Principal Triangulation of Britain in 1791, Troughton shifted to meet the demand for terrestrial tools, including waywisers — though these were useful principally for shorter distances, as the dial counts only 12 miles. Etched into the face is an indication of the unitless outer circle (“The Outer Circle are Chains and Links”) as well as a table of conversions:
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Note |
{ |
8 Furlongs — 1 Mile |
The “pole” is more commonly called a “rod;” chains of 100 links (each 7.92”, as defined by the final line) were used from XVIc to measure plots of land uniformly.
Item #JLR0753
Price: $17,000