The spelling of “gage” is part of our very rich USGS history. We have used that spelling for over a hundred years. In 1888, USGS Director John Wesley Powell met a very forward-thinking graduate student named Frederick Haynes Newell. Powell was so impressed that he made Newell the first full-time appointee to the new Irrigation Survey, which was created to investigate the potential for dams and canals in the western United States. At that time, there were no practical and systematic techniques for obtaining daily streamflow (or discharge) records, so Newell set up a training camp on the Rio Grande River at Embudo, New Mexico. Newell’s Camp of Instruction developed water measurement methods that are widely used by the USGS today. During the next ten years, Newell continued to play an important role in the development of streamflow ...
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Original Title: TIL the United States Geological Survey (USGS) uses the term “Gage” instead of “Gauge” because one employee in 1892 reasoned that the term “Gage” was the “proper Saxon spelling,” instead of the Norman “Gauge”
