Accession No

2153

Brief Description

dumpy level, c. 1880

Origin

Maker

Class

surveying

Earliest Date

1880

Latest Date

1880

Inscription Date

Material

metal (brass, 1 other); glass

Dimensions

length 232mm; breadth 65mm; height 125mm

Special Collection

Provenance

Transferred from Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, 05/1969.

Inscription

Description Notes

Metal alloy body with brass screws. Black finish. Telescope focused by rack and pinion moving the objective. Inverting eyepiece. No cross-hairs. Push-fit eyepiece with lens cover. Bubble mounted over telescope (no graduations). Free azimuth motion (no clamp). 4 foot screws through 2 plates.

Condition

References

Events

Description
The earliest form of modern surveyor’s level is the ‘Y’ level, which is a telescope supported in Y-shaped bearings. The telescope is held in place by pivoting straps, which allow the telescope to be reversed for back-sighting.

The Y level was unsuitable for difficult colonial terrain, requiring too frequent adjustments and the ‘dumpy’ level was developed in the early 19th century to overcome this. The dumpy level has a much shorter, fixed telescope, which turns about a central axis. It is compact, much more robust and is still being used in largely unaltered form on building sites and in road construction.
31/08/2006
Created by: updated by Ruth Horry on 31/08/2006

FM:42888