SKETCH OF WILLI A3I EDWARD WEBER. 553 



nize the fundamental cliaracter and far-reaching importance of 

 "Weber's work ; and, owing mainly to his clear-sighted advocacy 

 of the absolute system of measurement, this system was from the 

 first adopted as the basis for the operations of the British Asso- 

 ciation Committee on Electrical Standards, appointed originally 

 in 1862. " This system has now become so familiar to electricians, 

 and is taken so much as a matter of course, that it requires some 

 mental effort to recall the state of science when it did not exist, 

 and to appreciate the intellectual greatness of the man to whom 

 it is due. If we consider method and point of view, rather than 

 acquired results, it is not too much to say that the idea of abso- 

 lute measurements, underlying as it does the conception of the 

 conservation of energy, constitutes the most characteristic differ- 

 ence between modern physics and the physics of the early part of 

 our century. And to no one man is so large a share in this great 

 step due as to Wilhelm Eduard Weber." 



Weber, in conjunction with Kohlrausch, determined the rela- 

 tions between electrical and magnetic measurements expressed in 

 the same unities, concerning which there seems to have been 

 some confusion. He determined the chemical actions by electrol- 

 ysis which correspond with the passage of a unity of current in 

 a second, and by this furnished a practical means of reconstitut- 

 ing that unity in experiments. He pointed out and put in prac- 

 tice some of the most precise methods for determining the nu- 

 merical value, as related to the fundamental unities, of the 

 electrical resistance of a conductor. His name is also asso- 

 ciated with numerous labors for fixing the value of the prac- 

 tical unity of resistance, or the ohm, in terms of the mercurial 

 column. 



So retired was Weber's life in his later days that, though his 

 fame had not diminished, the world had almost forgotten that he 

 was still in it ; and it is said that when, at the meeting of the Ger- 

 man naturalists in Berlin a few years ago, the name of Weber 

 was read in the list of those who had taken part in the first meet- 

 ing held there in 1828, surprise was expressed at recognizing in 

 their octogenarian friend one who had sat there with Berzelius 

 and Ohm and Heim. 



Weber was a corresponding member of the Institute of 

 France, and had been a foreign member of the Royal Society 

 since 1850. 



