OCTOBKR I I, 1894] 



NATURE 



587 



admiraMe monetary system was much aRitated ; but the counsel 

 of the timid prevailed, and the wretclied system which we had 

 inherited mainly from England, but which is not in harmony 

 with the English, was allowed to fasten itself unon the indus- 

 trial interests of the country. The report on the subject by 

 John (luincy Adams, already referred to, is a monument of 

 exhaustive re>^earch and philosophical discussion. Nowhere is 

 the decimal system praised so highly as in this report. In it he 

 says of this system that, "considered merely as a labour- 

 saving machine, it is a new power, offered to man, incompar- 

 ably greater than that which he has acquired by the new agency 

 which he has given to steam. It is in design the greatest 

 invention of human ingenuity, since that of printing." This 

 is high praise, and it is difficult to understand hnw the author of 

 this and mucli more like it, could lack the courage to recom- 

 mend that his country should at once put itself in the way of 

 sharing the benefits of so remarkable a reformation. The 

 spirit of conservatism, which came from his ancestors along 

 with the yard and the pound, led him to advise that it was 

 better to await the action of other nations, especially Great 

 Britain. 



At the close of the last century, in different parts of the 

 world, the wurd pi'uni was applied to 391 dififerent units of 

 weight, and the word foot to 292 different units of length. Not 

 only were no two of these identical, but in only a few cases \\ere 

 their relative values known with anything like precision. In 

 the wonderful march of the nineteenth century, most of these 

 have been swept away ; until now, of the enlightened nations of 

 the earth, only the English-speaking people cling to what Lord 

 Kelvin has so felicitously characterised as our " brain-wearying 

 and intellect-wasting system of weights and measures." 



I must now return to a very brief consideration of the 

 indirect influence of precise measurement upon the welfare of 

 man. Thus far the development of exact standards has been 

 considered in relation to man's convenience, as facilitating the 

 transaction of business, by diminishing the uncertainty and 

 labour involved in commerce and trade, liut indirectly it has 

 been even more powerful. The use of correct standards of 

 weight and measure has been regarded from the beginning as 

 necessary to and indicative of integrity and fair dealing, among 

 nations as well as individuals. Ultimate standards of 

 reference, even in the earliest history of metrology, were 

 carefully guarded and usually considered a part of the para- 

 phernalia or accessories of the king or ruler. Although these 

 standards were, until a comparatively recent period, very rude 

 in their construction, they represented in a large measure the 

 integrity of the nation, and to depart from or modify them was 

 regarded as akin to a crime. According to Josephu-, when 

 Cain had settled in the land of Nod, and built a city, he invented 

 weights and measures. In the law as given to Moses it is 

 declared, " Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, 

 a great and a small." The renowned Chinese Emperor, Yeo, 

 who flourished 4000 years ago, kept the weights and measures 

 which were used in the markets in a part of his own palace. 

 In many countries standards were deposited in temples, and 

 priests were their custodians. One of the principal objects 

 sought to be secured \iy the Magna Charta was unilormity ol 

 weights and measures throughout the kingdom, anl the one 

 small spot in the world to-day whose neutrality is secured by 

 the joint agreement of all civilised nations, including even the 

 United States and Great liritain, is a hit of land near Paris, 

 where stands the building in which the international prototype 

 metre and kilogramme are preserved. 



Hut in a lar greater degree has precise measurement 

 influenced the character, condition and destiny of man through 

 its relation to the development of modern science. Volumes 

 might be written about this, although not much' is necessary 

 before an audience to many of whom it is almost a daily lesson, 

 and liefore another, smaller, audience of those who have con- 

 tributed so largely during the past quarter of a century to the 

 advancement of science and the improvement of the art of 

 measuring. 



Precision in measures demands and produces precision in 

 language, and exact language makes exact thinking possible. 



IJue cannot but admire the genius which enablea some of the 

 philosophers of a few centuries ago to triumph over the 

 obstacles growing out of the lack of exactness liotti in language 

 and experiment. When Newton was converting his theory of 

 the spheroidal form of the earth into established fact, he could 

 only ascertain the possible eliect of change o( temperature upon 



the period of a pendulum by means of comparisons of the length 

 of an iron bar when exposed to the sun's rays on a hot summer's 

 day, with its length on a frosty morning in winter. Even in 

 the earlier Transactions of the Royal Society of London, one 

 may find time measured in misereres and temperature in inches, 

 In the wonderful progress that has characterised the present 

 3ge, by which business methods and social life h.ave been well- 

 nigh revolutionised, exact science has been the dominant factor. 

 It is impossible here even to mention the many interesting 

 devices by means of which during the last half-century the 

 precision of measurements has been enorm )usly increased. 

 They are to be seen in nearly every laboratory, and are familiar 

 to you all. Their invention has made possilile many brilliant 

 and useful discoveries in science, and it is gr.atifying to know 

 that on this line our own country has been and is well to the 

 front. Many proofs of this might be given, but among the 

 most notable contributions of modern limes to the science and 

 art of'delicate and precise measurement, one cannot fail to note 

 the splendid work of Rowland in his measurement of light 

 wave-lengths, of Langley in his solar researches, and of 

 Michelson in his determination of the metre in terms of the 

 ether vibration. The glory of the nineteenth century is exact 

 experiment and honest logic, and precision in measurement has 

 done much to make both possible. 



In the matter of the metrology of the affairs of daily life, 

 however, it is humiliating to confess that we are still skulking 

 in the rear. Our sixty millions of intelligent citizens are far 

 less intelligent, and less fit for the responsibilities that rest upon 

 them, than they might be, were they not continually wearying 

 their brains and wasting their intellects in constant struggle 

 with the difficulties inherent in the system of metrology to 

 which we so blindly cling. I yield to no one in my apprecia- 

 tion of the accurate learning and profound scholarship of the 

 gentlemen of the Faculty of the institution before which I have 

 the honour of appearing today, but I unhesitatingly alTirni that 

 not one of them, not even all of them together, can correctly set 

 forth the system of weights and measures in common use at the 

 present time in this country. Let us hope that this burden will 

 be lifted in the near future, and that the pound and yard with 

 their innumerable and irrational derivatives, relics of the dawn 

 of civilisation, will be replaced by the beautifully simple 

 kilogramme and metre. We can then r;;st with the pleasing 

 assurance that when the next cataclysm shall have passed, and 

 the archa;ologist of the future shall be burrowing among the 

 ruins of the present age, he will not be misled by the crudeness 

 of our metrology to catalogue us along with earlier civilisations, 

 At best he will exhume much which we could wish to remain 

 for ever buried, but let us hope that the evidence of integrity 

 and simplicity in commercial transactions, of delicacy and 

 precision in scientific investigations, and especially of honest 

 and independent thinking, will be such that he will be compelled 

 to put us down as a race in which, to apply the eloquent words 

 of Buckle, " the greatness of men has no connection with the 

 splendour of their titles, or the dignity of their birth ; it is not 

 concerned with their quarterings, their escutcheons, their 

 descents, their dexter-chiefs, their sinister-chiefs, their chevrons, 

 their bends, their azures, their gules, and the other trumperies 

 of their heraldry ; but it depends upon the largeness of their 

 minds, the powers of their inlcllect, and the fulness of their 

 knowledge." 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES. 



Paris. 



Academy of Sciences, October i. — M. Locwy in the chair. 

 — The miss of .Mercury and the acceleration of the mon move- 

 ment of Encke's comet, according to the recent work of .M. O. 

 Backlund. A note by M. O. Callandre.au. — On die automatic 

 transmitter of steering directions, by Lieut. H. Bersier. The 

 alternating current from a Kuhmkorfi's coil passes from the 

 pivot of a compass through the aluminium pointer, and leaps 

 from the extremity o( this needle to one of six vertical plates 

 pl.aced at intervals round the inside of the compass-box. This 

 alternating current has no effect on the magnet, but serves to 

 work six corresponding rel.ry.'^, and hence to cause the illumin- 

 ation of corresponding signal lamps placed in various parts of a 

 vessel, and to set in motion the steering apparatus. The least 

 deviation from the set course is automitic.\ily and imaiediately 

 corrected in this way. The coarse is altered by simpiy rotating 



NO. 1302, VOL. 50] 



