SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



89 



SCIENTIFIC LITERATUEE. 



THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

 To one of scientific tastes, who at 

 the same time welcomes the recent 

 American renaissance of the historical 

 novel, or to one whose faith in the 

 common sense of his countrymen may 

 waiver on considering their apathy 

 towards the metric system, a recent 

 work by M. Bigourdan* will have 

 great fascination. Nor are these words 

 carelessly chosen, for a more fasci- 

 nating work on any phase of the his- 

 tory of science has not appeared in 

 recent years. It is true that the topic 

 seems trite enough. All the world 

 knows the story, or thinks it does; the 

 French revolution, the general up- 

 heaval, the different systems proposed, 

 M^chain's mistake in the longitude of 

 Barcelona, the consequent error in the 

 meter, the final adoption of the system 

 by a large majority of the civilized 

 countries, all this is familiar. But one 

 has only to read a dozen pages of M. 

 Bigourdan's work to find himself in 

 the midst of a wealth of interesting 

 history of which he probably never 

 even heard. 



The fact is, it needed some one con- 

 nected with the Paris Observatory to 

 write such a work, and even he could 

 not have done it until of late. For 

 although the observatory has long had 

 in its possession the original docu- 

 ments deposited there by virtue of a 

 decree of the year 12, it is only re- 

 cently that it received the valuable 

 manuscripts relating to the early his- 



* 'Le syst^me m6trique des poids et 

 mesures. Son Establishment et sa pro- 

 pagation graduelle, avec 1' histoire des 

 operations qui ont servi a d^erminer 

 le metre et le kilogramme.' Paris, 

 Gauthier-Villars, 1901; pp. vi+458; 

 price 10 fr. 



tory of the system, which were given 

 by Mme. Laugier, who had received 

 them from her father, M. Mathieu, 

 who in turn had them from a no less 

 important actor in the drama than M. 

 Delambre himself. 



It is impossible to give in a few 

 words any worthy resume of the work, 

 or adequately to speak of its style. It 

 opens with a chapter on the precur- 

 sors of the reform, going back even 

 to the system imder Charlemagne, to 

 the effects of feudalism and to the 

 efforts of such early leaders as Mou- 

 ton, Huyghens and Wren. This is fol- 

 lowed by a statement of the action of 

 the Assembly on Talleyrand's proposi- 

 tion, the history of the provisional 

 meter, the work of the temporary com- 

 mission, the efforts at nomenclature 

 and so on through the establishing of 

 the system on a scientific foundation. 

 Then come the long story of its adop- 

 tion by France, ending with the law 

 of July 4, 1837; the longer story of its 

 struggles for recognition in other 

 countries, and the later history of the 

 International Bureau and its remark- 

 able metrological labors at St. Cloud, 

 Still less is it possible to give, in the 

 limited space at command, any idea 

 of the thrilling historic action so un- 

 assumingly stated in the documents at 

 M. Bigourdan's command. The diffi- 

 culties of men like Delambre and 

 M6chain, unable to make surveys with- 

 out being suspected of signaling to the 

 enemy, arrested as spies because they 

 wished to visit their triangulation sta- 

 tions, imprisoned, insulted, limited in 

 the bare necessities of life, the only 

 wonder is that other errors than that 

 of Mechain did not find frequent place 

 in the work. 'I am an academician,* 

 said Delambre to a sansculotte who 



