PARIS CONFERENCES. 



although this honour ought to have been specially 

 paid him, when his own system was adopted. For 

 myself it was a little triumph that a reproduction of 

 my mercury unit, which Lord Rayleigh made ac- 

 cording to a method somewhat different from my 

 own, should yet agree to a ten thousandth part with 

 the standard tallies delivered by our firm. 



It was certainly somewhat hard for me, that my 

 resistance unit, arrived at with so much trouble and 

 labour, which had speaking generally made the first 

 comparable electric measurements possible, then was 

 employed for more than a decennium throughout 

 the world and adopted as legal international standard 

 of resistance for telegraphy by the International Tele- 

 graph Congress, should have now suddenly to be set 

 aside with my own co-operation. But the great 

 advantage of a theoretically established system of 

 standards, consistently carried out and universally 

 adopted, necessitated this sacrifice offered up to 

 science and the public interest. 



My literary activity was in general limited to 

 the presentation of my scientific and technical labours 

 and the description of the mechanical contrivances 

 which I had constructed. I was however often obliged 

 to repel attacks, which were levelled directly or in- 

 directly at my firm or at myself personally. This 



was the more necessary as my firm never advertised, 



24 



