766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all these machines, gauges, dies, screws, and other parts of engines, will 

 be the work of years — will cost millions of dollars. 



" The metric system is not a convenient one for common use. Its 

 measures are not of convenient length. The yard, half the stature of a 

 man, is of convenient length to handle, to use, to apply. It, and the 

 goods measured by it, can be halved, quartered, subdivided into eighths, 

 sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths, etc. ; or it can be with equal fa- 

 cility divided into tenths, hundredths, thousandths. Half a metre is no 

 dimension ; half a centimetre is an unknown quantity ; but half a yard, 

 half a foot, half an inch, half a bushel, one fourth of a bushel, of a quart, 

 of a pint, etc., are recognized. If half a litre, of a decilitre, or a quar- 

 ter, eighth, or sixteenth of these quantities is provided for, then the 

 metric decimal system is abandoned at once. 



" In calculation the metric system applies admirably to money and 

 accounts of money ; but even here the Government has been obliged to 

 abandon for the convenience of the people the true, strict, decimal sys- 

 tem, and to coin half a dollar, half an eagle, the quarter of a dollar, etc. 



" In the use of weights and measures, however, there are not so great 

 advantages in the decimal system. The unit is too large, and the num- 

 bers produced and used in the calculations of the engineer are tedious 

 to write and are beyond the limits of ready apprehension. 



*' The ciphers and figures '00000073 convey no idea to a mind trained 

 in the English and American system, and yet such combinations are 

 common in French works of science and mechanics. 



" The true scientific natural basis of the metric system has been aban- 

 doned. The metre was intended and enacted to be the ten-millionth of 

 tiae quadrant of the terrestrial meridian of Paris. In the progress of 

 geodesy and science, it is ascertained that the standard metre bears no 

 (exact) relation to that quadrant, and, though it is probably very nearly 

 the ten-millionth of the quadrant of the meridian in which New York 

 lies, it is not probable that it is the ten-millionth of either of the three 

 other quadrants of that meridian, or of any quadrant of any other me- 

 ridian. 



" The fact is, that the metre is quite as arbitrary and unscientific a 

 standard as the foot or yard. It is of less convenient length than either 

 of them, and its compulsory adoption would derange the titles and rec- 

 ords of every farm and of every city and village lot in the United States ; 

 would put every merchant, farmer, manufacturer, and mechanic to an 

 unnecessary expense and trouble, and all, it seems to me, for the sake 

 of indulging a fancy only, and a baseless fancy, of closet philosojjhers 

 and mathematicians for a scientific basis of measures and weights which 

 (as the metre is not a ten-millionth of the Paris quadrant, is not what 

 it professes to be and was enacted to be) can not be found in the French 

 metric system. 



" 1. The unit of length: The metre is 3-280890 + feet, or 39-37079 + 

 inches. 



