The clock movement carries the registering paper forward by one of the wheels working into a rack attached to the frame.
The adjustment of the instrument should be carefully made at its first erection. The scale for pressure should be established experimentally, by applying weights of 2, 4, 6, &c., lbs., to move the pressure plate.
The registration trace for twenty-four hours is readily understood. The direction is recorded on the centre part; the pressure on one side, and the rain on the other. Lines parallel to the length of the paper show no rain, steady wind, and constant pressure. On the rain trace, a line parallel to the width of the paper shows that the pencil had been drawn back to zero, a quarter of an inch of rain having fallen. The hour lines are in the direction of the width of the paper.
At the International Exhibition 1862, Messrs. Negretti and Zambra exhibited an improved Osler’s anemometer, having combined with it Robinson’s cups, so that the pressure and velocity appear on the same sheet, on which a line an inch in length is recorded at every ten miles; thus the complete instrument shows continuously the direction, pressure, and velocity of the wind.
128. Beckley’s Anemometer.—Mr. R. Beckley, of the Kew Observatory, has devised a self-registering anemometer, which consists of three principal parts: Robinson’s cups for the determination of velocity; a double fan, or wind-mill governor, for obtaining the direction; and a clock to move a cylinder, around which registration paper is wrapped. The paper records the time, velocity, and direction of the wind for twenty-four hours, when it must be replaced. It has a cast-iron tubular support, or pedestal to carry the external parts—the cups and the fans,—which must be erected upon the roof of the building upon which it is desired to mount the instrument.
The fans keep their axis at right angles to the wind; and with any change of direction they move, carrying with them an outer brass tube, which rests upon friction balls on the top of the pedestal, and is attached to a tubular shaft passing through the interior of the pedestal, and terminating with a mitre wheel. The mitre wheel, working with other cogged wheels, communicates the motion of the direction shaft to a cylinder carrying a pencil, to record the direction.
The shaft carrying the cups is supported upon friction balls, placed in a groove formed on the top of the direction shaft, and passing through the interior of that shaft, comes out below the mitre wheel, where it is terminated in an endless screw, or worm.
Upon the wind moving the cups, motion is given to the innermost shaft, thence to the worm-wheel, whence motion is given to a pencil which registers the velocity.
De la Rue’s metallic paper is used in registration, it having the property of receiving a trace from a brass pencil. The pencils can, therefore, be made in the most convenient form. Mr. Beckley forms each pencil of a strip of brass wrapped round a cylinder, making a very thin threaded screw, so that the contact of the pencil cylinder and the clock cylinder is a mere point of the metallic thread. The pencil cylinders are placed side by side upon the cylinder turned by the clock, and require no spring or other appliance to keep them to their work, but always make contact with the registration paper by their own gravity. They therefore require no attention, and being as long as the trace which they make, they will last a long time.
The velocity pencil has only one turn on the cylinder, and its pitch is equal to a scale of fifty miles upon the paper. The direction pencil has likewise one turn on its cylinder, its pitch being equal to a scale of the cardinal points of the compass upon the paper.