Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/91

Rh employ them; because, by making each purchaser pay only for what ho consumes, and by preventing that extravagant waste of gas which we frequently observe, the manufacturer of gas will be enabled to make an equal profit at a diminished price to the consumer.

(71.) The sale of water by the different companies in London, might also, with advantage, be regulated by a meter. If such a system were adopted, much water which is now allowed to run to waste would be saved, and an unjust inequality between the rates charged on different houses by the same company be avoided.

(72.) Another most important object to which a meter might be applied, would be to register the quantity of water passing into the boilers of steam-engines. Without this, our knowledge of the quantity evaporated by different boilers, and with fire-places of different constructions, as well as our estimation of the duty of steam-engines, must evidently be imperfect.

(73.) Another purpose to which machinery for registering operations is applied with much advantage is the determination of the average effect of natural or artificial agents. The mean height of the barometer, for example, is ascertained by noting its height at a certain number of intervals during the twenty-four hours. The more these intervals are contracted, the more correctly will the mean be ascertained; but the true mean ought to be influenced by each momentary change which has occurred. Clocks have been proposed and made with this object, by which a sheet of paper is moved, slowly and uniformly, before a pencil fixed to a float upon the surface of the