A level is used in construction to make sure something is perfectly horizontal or vertical. This one, made of rosewood with brass fittings, was invented in 1869, and made in 1870, by Charles M. and Edwin A. Stratton in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Edwin’s son-in-law, Raymond O. Stetson purchased the company in 1902. He sold it in 1912, to the Goodell-Pratt Company. In the late 1920s, the firm merged with the Millers Falls Company, which had its own line of levels, and the Stratton brand disappeared.