Febeuaey 6, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



215 



The interest shown in this subject shows 

 that the time is ripe for further action. 



The Mechanical Problems of a New Ore- 

 producing Territory: C. A. Waldo, 

 Purdue Uuiversitj', Lafayette, Ind. 

 A recently discovered copper and silver 

 district in the Pan-Handle of Oklahoma 

 is thirty miles distant from railroad trans- 

 portation. The problem is to secure power 

 to concentrate the ore at the mine. Elec- 

 tric power generated by the w-ater of a 

 stream twenty miles distant may be used, 

 or gas engines adapted to the use of Texas 

 oil may be more practicable. 



The Metric System: J. Burkitt Webb, 

 Stevens Institute, Hoboken, N. J. 

 The advocates of the metrical system are 

 pushing it more than it is worth. If its 

 opponents would get up a system of their 

 own there would be less chance of its suc- 

 cess. Its main advocates are scientific 

 rather than practical men, who make use 

 of the less important parts of the system. 

 Taking up these points in reverse order, 

 we remark that the less important part of 

 any system of weights and measures is 

 that which this designation indicates, with 

 measures restricted to those of capacity. 

 Pleasures of length form the most impor- 

 tant part of any system. Measures of 

 quantity and weights of different kinds 

 often exist, and are in common use together 

 withoixt difficulty, though in scientific work 

 involving accurate calculations trouble may 

 result. Now, those who advocate a legal 

 compulsory introduction of the metrical 

 system are mainly interested in this end 

 of it, and have little idea of it from the 

 other and more important one. Standards 

 of length lie at the foundation of all our 

 important and accurate manufacturing and 

 engineering work, and an examination of 

 the necessities of this work, in both its 

 theoretical and practical parts, shows that 

 a change to the metrical system would be 



not only very expensive, but detrimental. 

 It is difficult to estimate the cost of a 

 change from the inch, with its multitudin- 

 ous ramifications throughout the mechan- 

 ical world, to metrical units; it would be 

 enormous, and what advantages has met- 

 rical measure that the inch may not have, 

 and much more ? As to the size of it, the 

 meter has nothing better to offer; and as 

 to its subdivisions that into .sixteen parts is 

 far better that that into ten, except for cer- 

 tain purposes of calculation, and here the 

 right thing to do is not to change to ten, 

 but to so improve calculation by sixteenths 

 as to make it also better than reckoning by 

 tenths. This leads to the next point, or 

 that of a system of calculation by six- 

 teenths which shall be superior in all points 

 to that by tenths. 



The doubts that one may have as to the 

 possibility of this ai'e illusory, and mainly 

 founded on the mistaken idea that the ad- 

 vantage of the so-called decimal systeni 

 has anything to do with the number ten. 

 'Decimal' is a misnomer. 'Digital' would 

 be quite as good, but neither touches the 

 system itself, which consists in the values 

 of the consecutive places, units place, tens 

 place, etc., being in geometrical progres- 

 sion. The system would exist and have 

 its characteristic advantages with any 

 number as the ratio of this progression. 



Now, sixteen is in many ways a better 

 number than ten, and the change to a sys- 

 tem having sixteen as its ratio or root 

 would be such a change as a Chinaman has 

 to make in adopting a European language 

 with its methods of writing and print- 

 ing and reckoning. A Chinaman might 

 not understand if he were told that his 

 language was inferior, say, to German, any 

 more than a devotee of the meter can see 

 that his idol is at most a poor stick lacking 

 in the proportions needed for common 

 measurements. 



The next or first point follows from this. 



