316 Life j Researches, and Discoveries of F. W. Bessel. 



sented to the Berlin Academy in 1832, and printed in their Me- 

 moirs for 1830 ; every substance examined, including meteoric 

 iron and stony masses, having given exactly the same coefficient 

 of gravitating intensity as compared with its inertia. 



Immediately connected with the length of the seconds' pendu- 

 lum is the determination of standards of weight and measure. 

 The fixation of the Prussian standard of length, ordered by law 



after 



M 



was com- 



to him, in 1837. The account of this operation, and of the 

 comparison of the new standard with the Peru toise, which had 

 served for the measure of the pendulum, forms the subject of a 



Memoir 



Eminent as were his mathematical resources, and his aptitude 

 for bringing them to bear in the most advantageous and effective 

 manner upon every point of practical application, there is, per- 

 haps, no subject, among the multitude of those which at differ- 

 ent times engaged his attention, in which these qualities were 

 more singularly called into action, in combination with his skill 

 as an astronomer and his perfect knowledge of instruments, than 

 in the geodesical operations which he was about this period called 



upon 



angulation of Eastern Prussia. Though the actual extent of this 

 triangulation was not considerable, the extreme points connected 

 being only about 120 English miles distant, still few trigonomet- 

 rical operations have been executed of greater circumstantial im- 

 portance, inasmuch as it had for its especial object to connect the 

 operations of Struve in the north of Russia and Finland, and 

 those of von Tenner in the south of that empire, with those ot 

 Western and Southern Europe, from which they previously stood 

 altogether disjoined. The triangulation of Hessia, Thuringw- 

 Brandenburg, and Silesia, under the direction of General Muffling, 



^„..„ ww „ lllc xxaiiuverian and Danish measurement "" •;-- 



one hand, and those of France (and consequently also of Bntam) 

 on the other, with the Bavarian and Austrian surveys. The 

 chain of connexion had, moreover, been carried on by the trian- 

 gulation of Western Pm Ss i a and the Grand Duchy of Posen, as 



iar as thfi hnrrWc nf tU^ t\.; — u_ yt m .. f^u* . n ^A ane link 



Haff. 



farthest 



mentioned operation, and Memel, to bring together these detae&ea 

 masses, and bind them into one vast European combination. 



liessel's conduct af thi'c ^^v—* : i^J i;ir* oxrp.rV thi^a 



adopt 



ical 



peculiar 



nient 



made 



