398 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and cubic measures, and between volume and weight. This diversity 

 is not so confusing as it might be, because the foot and inch are per- 

 fectly definite in value, and a pound is generally understood to mean 

 an avoirdupois pound. 



In 1790, the same year in which Jefferson presented to American 

 legislators his decimal system of coinage, weights and measures. Prince 

 Talleyrand in France distributed among the members of the Con- 

 stituent Assembly at Paris a proposal to found a new system of weights 

 and measures upon some natural and invariable standard, with the hope 

 that it might become a world system and thus displace the multitude 

 of complexities which constituted a serious barrier to commerce. The 

 cooperation of Great Britain was particularly desired, and a special 

 invitation was conveyed to the British parliament to send commissioners 

 from the Eoyal Society for the purpose of conference with a similar 

 commission from the French Academy of Sciences. The British gov- 

 ernment withheld even the courtesy of an acknowledgment. Spain, 

 Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland were represented in 

 the conference. The result is now too well known for special recital. 

 The metric system of weights and measures was born amid the throes 

 of the French Revolution. With the reign of terror it had nothing in 

 common. It was a model of simplicity and consistency, but it had two 

 important elements of weakness. The first of these is found in the 

 fact that there had been no popular demand for it. The second is that 

 it was based on the false assumption that an absolute and invariable 

 standard can be found in nature. Each of these elements is worth 

 consideration. 



The function of legislation in connection with science is to utilize 

 science for the general welfare only so far as the people are prepared 

 to accept improvement. In a community where ignorance prevails 

 even sanitary science can not be enforced for the saving of human life 

 from pestilence, unless military despotism is substituted for local self- 

 government until the causes of pestilence are eradicated. Water as 

 clear and sparkling as the freshest dew-drop may contain in solution 

 tasteless poison that spreads typhoid fever or cholera among the ill- 

 informed skeptics who are unwilling to be taxed for their own pro- 

 tection. The French people knew nothing of the branch of applied 

 science now called metrology. They felt no evils as the outcome of 

 a multitude of unrelated weights and measures, incomprehensible to 

 most of the world. The new decimal system was easy to brand as the 

 fiction of doctrinaires, just as the taxpayers in a fever-stricken com- 

 munity denounce and resist the officers of the law who close an infected 

 spring of water. The logical outcome of the French revolution was 

 the military despotism of Napoleon, and by this means the metric sys- 

 tem was forced upon an unwilling people. The generation on whoni 



