144 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 83. 



of scientific metliods in the class room upon the 

 affairs of every-day life. Barring the risk of 

 some vicious compromise, it should be a hope- 

 ful sign for the speedy adoption of the metric 

 system that the American people are now so 

 thoroughly imbued with the decimal method of 

 notation and have become impatient of other 

 forms of reckoning. 



As bearing on the difficulties felt to-day by 

 several eminent Englishmen, I can testify that 

 thirty years ago when serving in a great manu- 

 facturing establishment under a man of more 

 than ordinary ability and intelligence, who had 

 been thoroughly drilled in the intricacies of the 

 older arithmetics, it was a matter of surprise to 

 us youngsters that on presenting any decimal 

 computation to our chief he invariably con- 

 verted the decimals into vulgar fractions, not 

 at all for the sake of the double verification of 

 our work, but that he might comprehend clearly 

 the matter in hand. We respected the thor- 

 oughness with which the old schooling had 

 taken possession of the man, though we could 

 not but marvel that the number of his fingers 

 and toes had so little influenced the workings 

 of his mind. I have reason to believe that 

 many elderly merchants and manufacturers in 

 this vicinity were at that time of the same 

 habit and opinion as my friend ; in fact, their 

 training had been similar to his. But it would 

 probably be difficult to find many such men in 

 the country to-day. 



It may seem incredible to most of your read- 

 ers, as it does to myself, that the per cent, mark 

 (^), now in universal use, is in this country a 

 modern innovation. In the year 1858, on the 

 occasion of printing a ' Dictionary of Solubili- 

 ties,' I found that the charater fo was unknown 

 to the printers and type founders of Boston and, 

 Cambridge, and was not to be had in the market. 

 At my instigation, and at my own expense, the 

 leading type founder in Boston prepared at that 

 time a punch and matrix and cast types of the 

 character in question. It is of interest to re- 

 mark, by the way, that the procuring of this 

 type was the result of French influence. In my 

 capacity of American collaborateur of the old 

 Repertoire de Chimie Appliquee, I had become 

 familiar with the economy and convenience of 

 the per cent. mark. 



As regards the inconvenience of changing 

 from the present to the metric system, it seems 

 to me that it would be felt more keenly in 

 measurements relating to buildings than in the 

 matter of weights or of measures of capacity. 

 Most existing constructions have been made in 

 terms of feet and inches. ' Dimension work ' 

 and 'dimension lumber,' all joists and beams, 

 whether of wood or iron, bricks, boards, cast- 

 ings and moulds for castings, are measured by 

 feet and inches. Plans and specifications have 

 been drawn, stated and acted upon in these 

 terms. Feet and inches have full possession of 

 the bodies and souls of masons, carpenters and 

 other mechanics, and it would doubtless be 

 highly inconvenient in many instances, espec- 

 ially in the case of repairs and reconstructions, 

 to make the inch and the centimeter lie down 

 together harmoniously. 



Here is an impediment which must be faced, 

 and the public needs to be taught how much 

 more rational it would be to accept the metric 

 system in its entirety than to acquiesce in the 

 gradual subdivision of our common measures 

 into tenths, for the sake of a simplification 

 which would be incomplete at the best. The 

 practical experience of the French and other 

 nations has shown emphatically that the diffi- 

 culty just now mentioned is in no sense in- 

 superable. Every instructed person knows that 

 the inconveniences incidental to the adoption 

 of the system have been met and overcome by 

 most of the civilized nations. That some small 

 hitches may have occurred in respect to non- 

 essential details does not in the least detract 

 from the great gain which has everywhere re- 

 sulted from the adoption of the metric system. 

 For example, it is simply amusing to hear the 

 hawkers in the streets of Paris oflier their hari- 

 cots verts at so many sous the demi-kilo. The 

 habit shows merely how, in the final shadings, 

 strict verbal and logical accuracy must give 

 way to a combination of inherited instinct or 

 sentiment and practical convenience. There is 

 no sense anyway or anywhere in stickling too 

 strongly for le pied de la lettre, though for the 

 sake of preventing fraud it was, perhaps, well 

 enough for the French authorities to have ac- 

 cepted the term demi-kilogram rather than to 

 have encouraged the perpetuation of the old 



