Talk:Stream gauge
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[edit] Gage -> gauge
I propose changing the article to "stream gauge" because "gauge" is used throughout the British english-speaking world, and from my experience in most American english-speaking cases too. To illustrate, here are numbers of records brought up by Web of Science searches (which search words in titles or abstracts of articles in peer reviewed journals):
- "stream gage" = 13
- "stream gauge" = 21
- "gage" + "discharge" = 38
- "gauge" + "discharge" = 226
- "gage" + ("river" or "channel" or "stream") = 88
- "gauge" + ("river" or "channel" or "stream") = 802
Daniel Collins 16:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] gage vs gauge
If anything, I think it should be cross-listed with both spellings. Most agencies in the United States use the spelling "gage" and not "gauge". For example, both the USGS and Corps of Engineers use this spelling in all their data dissemination, as does the Bureau of Reclamation. The majority of people who use Wikipedia for their definitions are not academics but rather interested citizenry or non-water types who will often have been to a USGS web site for real-time streamflow data and want to know more about how this data is collected. They will refer to it in a Wikepedia search as "gage" not "gauge". As to the origin of this derivation of the spelling....Around 1892, F.H. Newell (first USGS Chief Hydraulic Engineer and first Director of what is now the Bureau of Reclamation) is purported to be the person responsible for the USGS adopting the spelling of “gage” instead of “gauge”. Newell reasoned that “gage” was the Saxon spelling before the Norman influence added a ‘u’ to the spelling. Robert Follansbee (“A History of the Water Resources Branch, U.S. Geological Survey: Volume I, From Predecessor Surveys to June 30, 1919”, 1994) speculated that Newell may have been also influenced by the adoption of “gage” by the Standard Dictionary (1893).
Robert Holmes 130.11.160.14 20:59, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
