Cederholm Measuring Wheel

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Bought this Cederholm measuring wheel a few weeks ago at an auction for $5. Works good, but I can't figure out unit of measure.
Wheel is 6'6" in circumference, and 1 revolution equals 1 on the counter.
Laid out a 100' tape tonight, and 75' =11.7 on the counter, so it's very close to right.
Made by Cederholm Mfg in Bastrop TX.
Any idea what it would be used for? Wanted to use it for some rough measuring for new corral and shop building layout, and I still can, I guess, but going to take some calculating!
 
It is an acreage measuring wheel. You measure using the units that the counter reads. You do length and width. Multiply the two and then move the decimal point THREE places to the left and you have acres and tenths.

An example:
20 wheels by 20 wheels = 400 or .400 of an acre.

now in feet.
20 x 6.6 = 132
132x132=17424
17424/43560( sq. feet in an acre)=.4 So it is 4 tenths of an acre.

These wheels are used when estimating crop areas or damage.

You can used it to measure feet too just multiply the counter reading by 6.6 and you have feet.
 
JD is right, it's for measuring acreage. It measures in chains and links. One chain is 66ft. long. If your measurement is 1 chain X 1 chain you have .1 acre. If it's 1 chain by 10 chains it's 1 Acre. 10 chains X 10 chains is 10 acres. Back in the 60's those measurements were used by the ASCS offices to measure acreage for government programs. I used a steel tape with a snap hook on the end to measure. Snap a pin,(a 12 inch pin with a loop on the end and shove it in the ground and start walking 66 ft. then shove another pin in the ground and walk another 66 ft. and another pin and so on till you get to the other end of the field. Count the pins and you know how many chains across the field. You soon learned how to guess pretty close how far 66ft was and you would feel the slight tug to reach the end of the tape. Pull out the pins prematurely and you go back and start over. Before the steel tape, the measuring was done with tool that was made up of 100 links O--6.6"--O hooked together to become 66ft long. I can't recall how the links figured into the measurement but since the length of the link is 1/100th of a chain, it would be easy to figure it out.
 

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