Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/200

190 When one remembers that these one hundred and eighty-seven meters are presumably the worst of their kind, having been put in evidence by a naturally suspicious public, it is but fair to assume that the figures overrate rather than underestimate the errors of the average gas meter. Quoting from The Progressive Age, a journal devoted largely to the interests of the gas industry: "The meters made to-day will remain a long while in service before they begin to register incorrectly, and when we consider the dampness, extremes of temperature and hard usage they receive as they are transferred from cellar to attic, from among the dust, cobwebs and litter of a basement closet to the corner shelf of some coal cellar, to be the playground of rats, spiders and cockroaches, to be drenched in summer by sweating or leaky water pipes and wear a venerable beard of icicles in winter—to be, in fact, the worst-used machine about a gas plant—we can not fail but express surprise that it registers at all correctly."