Description
Whoever coined the phrase “good things come in small packages” must have been talking about a wooden bodied M. Attwood’s mining clinometer. Well okay, probably not. Nonetheless, what is packed into this six inch gem of a combination pocket tool is pretty remarkable. When you hold it in your hand it’s hard not to be impressed with how well the tool is made and how well all the features were incorporated in something so small. It’s a plumb and level, inclinometer, compass, and to top it off has sights. While some readers may be familiar with the more common aluminum framed variation of Attwood’s mining clinometer, this is to my knowledge the only wooden bodied variation of the tool. It is marked as having been made by A. Lietz & Co. of San Francisco, CA. There are other like wooden bodied tools marked only by Lietz, but none I’m aware of employ Attwood’s features and are not marked as his mining clinometer with his fall of angles table (see photo 3).
Melville Attwood was born in England in about 1813 and immigrated to the USA in 1852 at the age of 39. He arrived at the Port of New York on May 31 and his occupation was listed as Mining Engineer. Presumably, he came to America to pursue riches in the California gold rush. It would seem he was a well respected miner in CA during much of the second half of the 19th century. He wrote on multiple mining subjects including articles for the CA State Mining Bureau.
Adolph Lietz was born in 1860 in northern Germany in the city of Leubeck, one of Germany’s major port cities. Lietz immigrated to America in 1879 and settled in San Francisco where he worked for a number of scientific instrument companies before buying the firm of Carl Rahsskopff which name he changed to A. Lietz & Co. in 1882.
The earliest reference I can find to Attwood’s clinometer is from 1896 in an illustrated catalog of J.C. Sala in which is shown a similar example as made by Sala, but in aluminum (I’m aware of no such examples). The Sala catalog states, “This is a very useful and practical instrument for the use of the miner, prospector, millman and foreman of mines. It is light and can be carried in the pocket. With the aid of a small straight-edge, any inclination or angle can be determined. It is admirably adapted for the arranging of sluices and setting of amalgamating plates or timbering in drifts or inclines in a mine.”
It would seem these would have been more popular since they were small and handy, and could easily have been carried in the pocket of a miner, but for whatever reason don’t appear to have caught on as they are very rare. As mentioned above, this is the only example I’m aware of.
