404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



factory to most of those who use it. Change in our system of metrol- 

 ogy is not needed for political unification. Any legal enactment im- 

 posing a sudden change will be apt to arouse enough popular opposition 

 to ensure its repeal before the people have had a fair chance to give an 

 impartial test to the new system. A probation period of ten years in 

 the government departments might perhaps be better than one year; 

 or possibly it might be wiser at present to avoid specifying the length 

 of any probation period. It would be better for the demand to come 

 from the people at the end of thirty years than for a repeal of the law 

 to be forced after it has been in operation only a short time. 



Much has been said about the superiority of a binary to a decimal 

 system. It is admitted that the decimal system is better for purposes 

 of computation, but alleged that in the ordinary practical affairs of life 

 people divide into halves and quarters more readily than into tenths. 

 There can be no objection to the simultaneous application of both 

 methods, so far as convenience may suggest. A binary system does 

 not lend itself to decimal notation, while a decimal system does admit 

 of limited, but amply sufficient, binary subdivision. This has been 

 abundantly shown in the use of American money. Half-dollars and 

 quarter-dollars, as divisions, are entirely satisfactory to all advocates of 

 a decimal system. Our fathers coined eighth-dollars and sixteenth- 

 dollars also, but nobody seemed to want them. Half-meters and 

 quarter-meters as linear divisions are quite as good as half-dollars and 

 quarter-dollars. Our idea of a quarter of a dollar is no less definite if 

 it be called twenty-five cents. In like manner, no one can object to 

 calling twenty-five centimeters either a quarter of a meter or a metric 

 foot, agreeing in length with the human foot. That decimal subdivi- 

 sion is quite as natural as binary subdivision is shown by the universal 

 American tendency to express profits and losses as percentages. If 

 there is any real superiority in binary subdivision all dividends should 

 be expressed in thirty-seconds, or sixty-fourths, or hundred-and-twenty- 

 eighths. 



It has been urged that a duodecimal system is better than either a 

 binary or a decimal system. This may be granted, but its introduction 

 would involve practical difficulties much greater than any connected 

 with the general adoption of the metric system, including the abolition 

 of the British system. Its consideration has no more practical impor- 

 tance than a proposition to substitute Volapuk for the English language. 



The late Sir Joseph Whitworth expressed the opinion that the adop- 

 tion of the metric system would be easy if its advocates would only 

 lengthen the meter from 39.37 to 40 inches. This would make the 

 inch rather than the meter our unit of length. Such a change would 

 on many accounts be exceedingly desirable. But its consideration 

 could be only the result of compromise in an international conference 



