Anemometer mounted on a vertical shaft. The air flow past the cups in any horizontal direction turned the shaft at a rate that was roughly proportional to the wind speed. Therefore, counting the turns of the shaft over a set time interval produced a value proportional to the average wind speed for a wide range of speeds. It is also called a rotational anemometer. On an anemometer with four cups, it is easy to see that since the cups are arranged symmetrically on the end of the arms, the wind always has the hollow of one cup presented to it and
Anemometer cups and arms, and may have a value between two and a little over three. Every previous experiment involving an anemometer had to be repeated after the error was discovered. The three-cup anemometer developed by the Canadian John Patterson in 1926 and subsequent cup improvements by Brevoort & Joiner of the United States in 1935 led to a cupwheel design with a nearly linear response and had an error of less than 3% up to . Patterson found that each cup produced maximum torque when it was at 45° to the wind flow. The three-cup anemometer also had a more