John Bliss & Co. boasted in 1895 that they had sold over 10,000 instruments of this sort, and that they had proven "a most unqualified success as to DURABILITY and ACCURACY." This example was probably made after 1902, after the expiration of the last of Bliss’s patents. It came to the Smithsonian in 1964. The three dials of the register read tenths of a mile, ten miles, and 100 miles. The rotator is missing. Ref: John Bliss & Co., Abridgement of the Nautical Almanac for 1896 (New York, 1895).
