SYNOPSIS <)i PROCEEDINGS. 293 



considering the question in view of the fact that this year may see the 

 adoption by the United States government of the system now in 

 almost universal usage. It seems strange that Great Britain and the 

 United States, the two most enlightened of civilized nations, should 

 be among the last to adopt measures which wiil not only put them in 

 touch with the advance of science in other countries, but will 

 effect a great economic reform in commercial transactions. A measure 

 known as the Hurley Bill was introduced in the Fifty-fourth Congress 

 and failed to pass by only three votes. It is now on the House cal- 

 endar and is quite likely to become a law during the present session 

 of Congress. This bill is entitled " A Bill to fix the standard of 

 weights and measures by the adoption of the metric system of weights 

 and measures" and provides "That from and after the first day of 

 July, nineteen hundred, all the departments of the Government of the 

 United States, in the transaction of all business requiring the use 

 of weight and measurement, except in completing the survey of public 

 lands, shall employ and use only the weights and measures of the 

 metric system, and from said first day of July, nineteen hundred, the 

 metric system of weights and measures shall be the legal standard of 

 weights and measures recognized in the United States. " The adoption 

 of this measure is opportune — just as we are entering upon a period of 

 territorial expansion and opening up commercial relations with distant 

 colonies which will use American products and serve as distributing 

 stations for our exports to other countries. The metric bill now 

 pending before Congress is of such great importance that it may be of 

 interest to recall some of the facts leading to the adoption of the sys- 

 tem by the United States and our own connection with the interna- 

 tional metrological movement. It is a singular coincidence that while 

 the United States Government, then in its infancy, was considering a 

 plan of unification of weights and measures, France was investigating 

 the same problem. In 1790 Talleyrand, in view of the great diversity 

 of weights and measures then in use in France, proposed to members 

 of the Constituent Assembly that "either the old system should be 

 reformed or a new universal standard be adopted." It was decided 

 to have the French Academy of Sciences fix upon an invariable stand- 

 ard for weights and measures. Borda, Lagrange, Laplace, Minge, and 

 Condorcet were chosen as a committee to report upon the selection of 

 a standard. After considering the pendulum beating seconds, a quad- 

 rant of the equator, and a meridian quadrant, they selected the ten- 

 millioneth part of a quadrant of the meridian as a standard unit of 

 linear measure. On August 1, 1793, the metric system was provis- 

 ionally adopted by the National Assembly of France and on April 7, 

 1795, the nomenclature the system now bears was adopted. In the 

 United States Washington, realizing the necessity of a uniform system, 

 introduced the subject in his message to the First Congress, saying: 

 " Uniformity in the currency, weights and measures of the United 

 States is an object of great importance and will, I am persuaded, be 



