A J Dodge/Charles Wilder
Wilder Factory
Wilder Ad - 1921
Charles Wilder began making thermometers and barometers in 1860 in a former cotton factory in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He had 17 employees in 1876 and made instruments for the US government and for export. The factory had water power from the Contoocook River. Wilder manufactured barometers under the 1860 patent of Lum Woodruff, who had been a weather observer for the Smithsonian Institution in the 1850s. The barometers were very popular in the US at the time. Wilder remained in business until his death in July, 1900. In 1905 the business was sold to the Gurley Instrument Company and was moved to Troy, New York. Around 1920 they morphed into the Wilder-Pike Thermometer Company, again in Troy. Seneca Morris Pike was a Gurley employee who became part owner of the thermometer company. It did not survive the Great Depression of the 1930s and Pike died in 1968.
Albert J Dodge was an employee of the Wilder company who learned all the aspects of thermometer making. In 1891 he received a US patent for the design of a thermometer used in maple syrup refining, a local industry in the Northeast US. He also made thermometers in a home workshop and left the Wilder company when he was accused of stealing trade from them. He was a one-man operation, making the thermometers in his one-room workshop and traveling to market them. He continued in business until his death in August 1933.
The following is the US patent #28626 for Lum Woodruff's barometer design (3 pages):
Charles Wilder Ad American Agriculuturist 1862
