8 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



brought into the most convenient relations to one another, and all 

 of them brought into relation with the system of numeration 

 which all men employ. 



This was sought in two ways — one party, including most of 

 those who were competent to judge in the matter, endeavoured to 

 introduce into England the metric system, not because the metre 

 is approximately the ten-millionth part of the Earth's quadrant, 

 but because the metric system presents in the greatest attainable 

 degree the above-mentioned permanent advantages. The other 

 party — a minority among those competent to judge — followed Sir 

 John Herschel in his desire that Grreat Britain should set up a 

 new system in competition with the metric system, in which the 

 unit of length, which he proposed to call the module, should be 

 the ten-millionth of the Earth's polar axis, and should be divided 

 decimally. This module would be very nearly 50 British inches ;. 

 and he proposed that the inch should be very slightly lengthened 

 to make this relation exact. There would then be exactly 100 of 

 the new half-inches in his module. He also proposed that the 

 half -pint should be given a distinctive name, and that its capacity 

 should be altered in the very slight degree which would suffice to 

 make the new half-pint exactly the hundredth part of the new 

 cubic foot. A similar slight change was to be made in the ounce : 

 to make the new ounce exactly the weight of the tenth part of 

 the new half-pint of water. He pointed out that to bring all this 

 about would demand only excessively small deviations from our 

 existing inch, pint, and ounce ; and he thought that if England set 

 up a decimal system based on these units, it would be at once 

 adopted by the United States which employs English measures, 

 and by Eussia which at that time had a system of measures derived 

 from the English ; and that it would thus come into use in the 

 greater part of the manufacturing industry and of the commerce 

 of the world. A popular account of his proposal was given by 

 Sir John Herschel in a lecture delivered in 1863 : one of his 

 "Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects," published in 1867. 

 Herschel's advice was that his new decimal system should be 

 sanctioned by Parliament ; while at the same time permitting the 

 continued use of the old multiples into feet, yards, pounds, 

 gallons, etc., in their present relations to the inch, ounce, and 

 pint, but with the slightly altered values consequent upon the 



