SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 79. 



the powers conferred upon Congress by the 

 Constitution of the United States have not 

 hitherto been exercised in full. The im- 

 portance of investing the sole power of re- 

 gulating standards of weight and measure 

 in the National government was recognized 

 in the Articles of Confederation and expressed 

 in the Constitution of the United States. 

 The importance of a judicious exercise of 

 .that power was emphasized by Washington 

 in his first message to Congress. By direc- 

 tion of Congress, the Secretary of State, 

 Thomas Jefferson, made a report on July 

 15, 1790, in which he proposed an ex- 

 tremely interesting scheme founded on the 

 length of a uniform rod which would make 

 a single vibration per second when swing- 

 ing from one extremity. 



Jefferson fully appreciated the advantage 

 of a decimal system of weights and measures, 

 and the scheme proposed by him was as 

 purely decimal as that of the Metric System, 

 and in passing from the unit of length to 

 that of volume and mass resembled it greatly. 

 It may be truly said that full credit has 

 never been accorded this, the most accom- 

 plished of the fathers of the Eepublic, for his 

 nearly complete anticipation of the results 

 of the labor of the most brilliant men of the 

 most brilliant period of French science. 

 Jefferson's report was referred to a commit- 

 tee in the Senate which, having learned of 

 the movement toward uniformity in France 

 and other European countries, reported that, 

 in view of that movement, they considered 

 it inexpedient to make any changes in the 

 existing systems. Thus a little more than 

 a hundred years ago the policy of ' waiting 

 for the Metric System ' was inaugurated 

 and has practically continued to be the pol- 

 icy up to the present time. Occasional fur- 

 ther references to the matter were made in 

 reports, messages, bills ofiered, etc., during 

 the last years of the last century, but no 

 legislation resulted other than the inspec- 

 tion law of 1799, noted below. At least one 



important consequence followed a reference 

 to the desirability of action in the message 

 of President Madison, sent to Congress on 

 December 3, 1816. The paragraph relating 

 to weights and measures was referred by the 

 Senate to the Secretary of State, who was re- 

 quested to prepare a report in full upon the 

 subject, including such measures ' as may be 

 proper to be adopted in the United States.' 

 Four years later the Secretary, John Quincy 

 Adams, transmitted to the Senate his famous 

 report, which must always be regarded as a 

 classic. For exhaustiveness, elaboration of 

 detail and thoroughness of treatment no 

 other document in any language relating to 

 this subject is comparable with it. While it 

 has been a storehouse of information and 

 argument for all metrologists of later date, it 

 did not result in any very decided action on 

 the part of Congress . "Let them take the one 

 or the other, according to the degree of their 

 courage," Jefferson had said when, in 1792, 

 he proposed two schemes, the one being a 

 patching up of existing systems and the 

 other a sweeping reform through the adop- 

 tion of a decimal ratio throughout. While 

 no one has appreciated the merits of the 

 Metric System more completely than did 

 Adams, and no one has ventured to praise 

 it more highly, at the end of his splendid 

 contribution to metrological science he 

 reached the rather impotent conclusion that 

 Congress ought to fix the existing systems 

 with the partial uniformity of which they 

 may be susceptible, excluding all innova- 

 tions for the present, and that consultation 

 with foreign nations should be begun, look- 

 ing to the future establishment of universal 

 and permanent uniformity. It is difficult 

 to estimate what the lack of courage on the 

 part of a great and far-seeing statesman has 

 cost the people of the United States. The 

 population of the whole country at that 

 time did not exceed ten millions, and a 

 change in standards of measure would have 

 been comparatively easy. 



