Frazer. ] 536 [April 5, 
Millimeter. Mean of eight 
IDIiAVAGD AVG 5 acacacboooDGGd 1.011 observations. 
u. 
Mean of eight 
DISTANCE aati vey eet trent 1.5561 measurements. 
It would be well if a material could be discovered soft enough to offer 
the minimum resistance to the excavating action of the stylus, yet which 
could be hardened without distorting the shape of the depression. 
Some Tables for the Interconversion of Metric and English Units. 
By PERSIFOR FRAZER, JR., A. M. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, April 5, 1878.) 
Capt. Kater, in 1821, as a member of the Royal Standard’s Commission, 
appointed in 1818, made the determination of the meter to be 289.37079 
inches. This was adopted by the Commission and was embodied into 
the statute of the British Parliament enacted in 1824, establishing the 
platinum standard meter in Paris as in length equal to 39.3708 inches of 
brass at the temperature of 62° Fahrenheit, the platinum standard being 
at 0° Centigrade, or 32° Fahrenheit, the temperature of melting ice. 
Capt. Kater’s value was again sanctioned by law in 1864.* 
In 1866, the Royal Ordinance Survey, adopted 1 meter = 39.370482 
inches, on the authority of Col. (then Capt.) A. R. Clarke, Superintendent 
of the Office of the Survey at Southhampton. 
In 1869, the more recent Royal Standard’s Commission, under the Presi- 
dency of Astronomer Royal Airey, reported comparative tables, founded on 
Kater’s value, which were published in a Parliamentary Blue Book, and 
may be found at the end of the second Report of the Royal Standard’s Com- 
mission, published in that year.+ 
The subjoined work was undertaken to supply a want which every physi- 
cist and chemist, and, indeed, very many artisans and manufacturers have 
felt, for a set of convenient and consistent tables for converting various 
values of measure and weight from one into the other of the two systems 
between which at present the calculations of the greater part of the civil- 
ized world, both in science and trade, are divided. 
Every one knows that a multitude of tables for this object are already in 
* When the use of the metric sytem was rendered permissive in Great Britain 
so far as related to contracts. 
+ Extracts from a private letter from President F, A. P. Barnard, of Columbia 
College, New York. 
