104 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



Expenments for imi^rovinrj the Construction of Practical Statulards for 

 Electrical Measurements. — Report of tlte Go'mmittee, consisting of 

 Lord Rayleigh {Chairman), Dr. R. T. Glazebrook (Secretary), 

 Lord Kelvin, Professors W. E. Ayrton, J. Perry, W, G. Adams, 

 and G. Carey Foster, Sir Oliver J. Lodge, Dr. A. Muirhead, 

 Sir W. H. Preece, Professors A. Schuster, J. A. Fleming, 

 and J. J. Thomson, Dr. W. N. Shaw, Dr. J. T. Bottomley, 

 Rev. T. C. FiTZPATRiCK, Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney, Professor 

 S. P. Thompson, Mr. J. Rennie, Principal E. H. Griffiths, Sir 

 A. W, Rucker, Professor H. L. Oallendar, and Mr. George 

 Matthey. 



I'AUE 



Appendix. — Oft, Methods of Sigh Precision for the Comparison of Resist- 

 ances. By F. E. Smith 106 



In the last Report reference was made to a conference of representatives 

 of standardising laboratories which had been invited to meet in Berlin as 

 a preliminary to the more formal Conference on Electric Units suggested 

 at St. Louis. 



The question of this preliminary Conference was brought before the 

 Committee at a meeting on October 19, 1905, and attention was called to 

 the importance of Clause (2) of the provisional programme, viz. — 



*' Shall the three units, the Ohm, Ampere, and Volt, be defined inde- 

 pendently, or shall only two be defined, and, if so, which ? ' 



and it was agreed unanimously that two units should be defined inde- 

 pendently, and that these two should be the unit of resistance and the 

 unit of current. The Secretary was instructed to report this to the 

 Conference at Berlin. 



This Conference took place in October last at the Reichsanstalt in 

 Charlottenburg, and was attended by representatives from America, 

 Austria, Belgium, England, France, and Germany. 



Agenda prepai-ed with great care by the President of the Reichsanstalt 

 were very carefully discussed, and, as a result, the Conference expressed 

 the wish that an Internationa] Convention should be summoned in order 

 to arrive at agreement in the electric standards which are in use in the 

 different countries. 



The following resolution was further adopted : — 



' In view of the fact that the laws of the different countries in relation 

 to electrical units ai-e not in complete agreement, the Conference holds it 

 desirable that an official conference should be summoned in the course of 

 a year with the object of bringing about this agreement.' 



The Conference further expressed the opinion :— 



1. That the information before it is not suflSicient to enable it to pro- 

 pose any alteration in the formerly accepted value for tlie ampere. 



2. That the information before it is not sufficient to enable it to lay 



