62 Work Done by British Association Committees. 



foreign as well as British sources. It very soon appeared that 

 even among scientific workers, methods of measurement were 

 often used which were (comparatively speaking) not much 

 more accurate for the purpose in hand than measuring off 

 lengths of cloth by the reach from finger tip to shoulder are, 

 and that one of the very first steps to be taken was to find out 

 accrate methods in measurement, and to construct accurate 

 instruments. The trouble occasioned by these things may 

 be realised when it is found that it took about seven years to 

 produce a really reliable standard resistance. Everything about 

 it was ill understood at first. The most suitable material 

 was unknown ; wires which were supposed to be exactly alike 

 in constitution were found, on exact testing, to differ materially: 

 alloys supposed to be permanent were found to alter irregularly 

 in time. Different experimental methods for arriving at the 

 same result were found to give discordant results, and the 

 apparently small and obscure causes of the discrepancies had to 

 be searched out and corrected. The result has been that 

 electricity can now be dealt in for industrial purposes as easily 

 and accurately as any other commodity, and in some respects 

 more easily, since the fundamental system of weights and 

 measures used is international, both in actual value and names 

 of the quantities, so that pressure in volts, current in amperes, 

 and power in kilowatts mean the same things all the world 

 over. 



It is probably not too much to say that no authority 

 except the British Association could have been brought 

 about this result. No other body possessed the scientific 

 weight and insight required to initiate the system, no other 

 body could have enlisted such able assistance, and no other 

 body could so effectually insure the universal adoption by the 

 world of the system of measures and nomenclature brought 

 forward by it, and have led up to the international conferences 

 required for that adoption to be oflEicially ratified. The Lecturer 

 adverted to the small cost at which the work of the Associa- 

 tion's Committees was done, for though the sum total of the 



