Taylor.] ^^^ [Oct. -11, 



The kilogramme has in like manner been found to differ from its assumed 

 value by some small fraction, in consequence of the great difficulty at- 

 tending exact determinations of this kind. 



Our weights, measures and coins at present correspond much more nearly 

 with the English than with the French standard. Our commerce with 

 Great Britain is very much greater than with any other nation, and we 

 should certainly commit a great error in adopting the metric system unless 

 Great Britain should consent to adopt it also. 



Our adoption of the metric system, and the consequent change of our 

 linear unit, would sever our uniformity with Great Britain, a country 

 with -v^hich perliaps three-fifths of our foreign commerce is transacted, 

 besides whicli it would entail great inconvenience and much greater ex- 

 pense than is generally imagined. The measurements of every plot of 

 ground in the United States have been made in acres, feet and inches, and 

 are publicly recorded with the titles to the land according to the record 

 system peculiar to this country. What adequate motive is there to change 

 these expressions into terms which are necessarily fractional, and in which 

 those foreign nations, whose convenience it is proposed to meet, have no 

 conceivable interest? What useful purpose is subserved by designating a 

 building lot 20 X 100 feet in the form 6.095889 X 30.479448 metres? 



Besides this, the industrial arts during the last fifty years have acquired 

 a far greater extent and precision than were ever known before. Take, 

 for instance, the machine shop, in which costly drawings, patterns, tajis, 

 dies, rimers, mandrils, gauges and measuring tools of various descriptions, 

 for producing exact work, and repetitions of the same with interchange- 

 able parts, are in constant use. It has been calculated that in a well- 

 regulated machine shop, thoroughly prepared for doing miscellaneous 

 work, employing two hundred and fifty workmen, the cost of a new outfit 

 adapted to new measures would be not less than one hundred and fifty 

 thousand dollars, or six hundred dollars per man.* 



Supposing full consent were obtained for using metric measures in all 

 new machinery, how slow and difficult would it be to make the change. 

 A very large proportion of work consists in renewing worn parts ; where, 

 then, are the new measures to come in ? The immense plant of railway 

 motive power in the United States is all made to inches and parts. At 

 what time can a railway company afford to change the dimensions of the 

 parts of a locomotive engine? At no time, because the change would 

 require to be simultaneous in the whole stock. It is true that the old 

 dimensions might be adhered to, and called by metric names, putting 

 0.0254 metres, or 25.4 millimetres for one inch ; but this would be only an 

 evasion, not a solution of the problem. 



A practical defect in the working of this system, which has been demon- 

 strated by experience, is its incapability of binary divisions ; a defect 

 which of course attaches equally to every decimal scale ; and one which 



* "The Metric System in our Worksliops," etc., by Coleman Sellers. Journal of the 

 Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, June, 1874. 



