Gauge
Gauge names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Gauge PRESSURE, an instrument for indicating the intensity of a
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
PRESSURE, an instrument for indicating the intensity of a fluid contained in a closed vessel. Gauges are divided into three classes: the mercurial pressure gauge, the air manometer, and the spring gauge. The mercurial gauge consists of an inverted siphon or "U" tube of glass, the lower part of which contains mercury, and whose vertical legs are divided either in parts of an inch or divisions indicating pounds per square inch. One leg of the tube is open to the atmosphere and the other communicates with the vessel containing the fluid. The difference in level of the mercury indicates the difference in pressure between the atmosphere and the fluid. The air manometer consists of a long vertical glass tube closed at the upper end, open at the lower end, containing air and immersed in a transparent liquid which communicates with the vessel in which the pressure is to be determined. The compression of the air in the tube is proportional to the pressure. Spring gauges have metallic tubes or drums communicating with the closed vessel. The pressure tends to straighten the tube. The motion produced in the tube or drum is transmitted to a pointer by means of levers or other gearing. The pointer travels over a graduated arc from which the pressure is read directly.
Gauge a standard of measurement
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a standard of measurement. As applied to railways, gauge signifies the distance between the centers of each pair of rails, which in the ordinary or narrow gauge is 4 feet 81½ inches. The broad gauge of the Great Western Railway of England was formerly 7 feet; the Irish, Indian, and Spanish gauge is 5 feet 6 inches. Special narrow gauges have recently been adopted for mountain and mineral lines, such as the 3 feet 6 inch gauge of the Norwegian lines. Gauge is also the name applied to various contrivances for measuring any special dimension, such as the wire gauge, an oblong plate of steel, with notches of different widths cut on the edge, and numbered, the size of the wire being determined by trying it in the different notches till one is found which it exactly fits. The thickness of sheet metal is tried by a similar gauge.
Gauge An instrument for determining dimensions or capacity
American Watchmaker and Jeweler (1892)
An instrument for determining dimensions or capacity. The watchmaker cannot be too careful in the selection of his measuring instruments, as accuracy and perfection in watchmaking are essential elements to success. Accuracy is more essential than finish, though both are desirable; still a movement that is accurate may be a fine time-keeper, although it may be lacking in finish and not artistic to look upon. Measuring instruments of all kinds should be handled with care, and in the more delicate ones cleanliness also plays an important part. You cannot expect accurate results from a fine Vernier caliper that is recklessly thrown into a heap of other tools upon the bench. It should be carefully handled, and when you are through using it you should carefully wipe it and place it in some drawer in your bench, where it will not be mutilated by being jammed against other tools.
Gauge PRESSURE precautions against Nihilists
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
PRESSURE precautions against Nihilists, the prison -of Alexander III.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The physics in Collier's 1921 account still holds, and the spring (Bourdon) gauge it describes remains the standard dial gauge on boilers and compressors today erhap the biggest change is that mercurial gauges and manometers have largely been retired from workshops because of mercury's toxicity, while pressure is now most often read electronically by piezoresistive or strain-gauge transducers and reported in bar or kilopascals rather than pounds per square inch. On railways, the "ordinary" 4 ft 8½ in gauge (misprinted above as "81½ inches") is now the standard for roughly half to sixty per cent of the world's track, including all high-speed lines in Europe, China and Japan; the Great Western's 7 ft broad gauge had already been abolished in 1892, and Norway's 3 ft 6 in lines were converted to standard gauge by the middle of the twentieth century. Wire and sheet gauges of the notched-plate kind survive, but engineering drawings now specify metal thickness in millimetres or thousandths of an inch rather than by gauge number, precisely because the numbering never settled into one system.
Written for this edition, 2026.