Instrument	:	Stadimeter
Manufacturer	:	Schick Incorporated, Stamford, Connecticut.
Country of origin	:	U.S.A.
Manufacturing year	:	1943

The stadimeter was developed in the 1890s by Bradley Allen Fiske (1854-1942), a Lieutenant in the United States Navy who had access to a laboratory in New York City that was fully backed by the Western Electric Manufacturing Co. The instrument was designed to determine the distance to an enemy warship, the mast head height of which was easily found in the naval literature. Although Fiske obtained several patents for rangefinders during the 1890s, it is not yet clear which of these patents pertained to the stadimeter. Like a sextant, the stadimeter uses a system of mirrors to measure the angular distance between two distant objects. If the distance to the objects is known, the stadimeter reads the actual distance between the two, while if the distance between the objects is known, the stadimeter reads the distance to the objects.[1]

The instrument was probably retailed by Graff, Washbourne & Dunn in New York as their label is fitted on the top side of the instrument.

[1]: Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Ref: Instructions for the Use and Care of the Fiske Ship-Telegraphs and Stadimeter (Published by Authority of the Bureau of Ordnance, Navy Department, 1896).

Paolo E. Coletta, Admiral Bradley A. Fiske and the American Navy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1979), pp. 38-40.