COMMITTEES ON BEHALF OF THE GOVERNMENT 211 



They were brought up in the Senate on July 27, 1866, by 

 Senator Sumner, who made a speech on their merits, and were 

 passed on that day without discussion. The last two above 

 mentioned were approved on the same day, July 27, 1866, and 

 the first on July 28, 1866. 



Thus, it appears that in this instance the recommendations of 

 the Academy were received and accepted by Congress, and that 

 the action taken was in accord therewith. It is clearly a case 

 in which the Academy helped the Government. 



At the same time at which the use of metric measures was 

 legalized, Congress enacted a law enabling the Secretary of the 

 Treasury to supply a set of the standards to each of the States 

 of the Union. The Secretary requested the National Academy 

 to advise him as to the kind and form of standards that should 

 be furnished, the material of which they should be made, and the 

 proper means of verifying them. The request was referred to 

 the Committee on Weights and Measures which reported to the 

 Academy at the meeting of August, 1867. The report was 

 transmitted to the Treasury Department and the recommenda- 

 tions which it contained were adopted. 10 



Congress passed a third act at the same time with the other two, 

 as we have seen, authorizing the use in post-offices of weights of 

 the denomination of grams. The Academy appears not to have 

 been directly concerned in the passage of this measure, but at 

 the annual meeting of the following year (1867) a resolution was 

 adopted to the effect that the Academy considered it " highly 

 desirable that the discretionary power granted by Congress to 

 the Postmaster-General to use the metrical weights in the post 

 offices (should) be exercised at the earliest convenient day." As 

 we have noted in a previous chapter, a committee was appointed 

 in 1868 to urge upon the Postmaster-General the importance of 

 adopting the action mentioned in this resolution, but no results 

 followed at that time. 



The interest of the National Academy in metric measures 

 did not end with these proceedings. It will be recalled that two 



10 Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1879, p. 13. 



