266 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
1851, that distinguished mechanician, Mr Whitworth, of Manches- 
ter, was the first to show tne possibility of ascertaining by the sense 
of touch alone the one-millionth of an inch in a properly-adjusted 
standard of linear measure ; and in his great establishment at Man- 
chester they work and construct machinery and tools of all kinds 
with differences in linear measurements amounting to one ten- 
thousandth of an inch. The standards of the English inch, &c., 
made by him for the G-overnment — and now used by all the engine 
and tool makers, &c., of the United Kingdom — lead to the construc- 
tion of machinery, &c., to such minute divisions ; and the adoption 
of these standards has already effected enormous saving to the 
country by bringing all measured metal machinery, instruments, and 
tools, wherever constructed and wherever afterwards applied and 
used, to the same identical series of mathematical and precise gauges. 
The Sabbath , <#c., Typified in the Pyramid. 
The communication next discussed some others amongst the 
many and diversified matters which Professor Smyth fancifully 
averred to be typified and symbolised in the Great Pyramid. 
One, for example, of the chambers in the Great Pyramid — the 
so-called Queen’s Chamber — has a roof composed of two large 
blocks of stone leaning against each other, making a kind of slant- 
ing or double roof. This double roof, and the four walls of the 
chamber count six, and typify, according to Professor Smyth, the 
six days of the week, whilst the floor counts, as it were, a seventh 
side to the room, “nobler and more glorious than the rest,” and 
typifying something, he conceives, of a “ nobler and more glorious 
order ” — namely, the Sabbath. It is surely difficult to fancy any- 
thing more strange than this strange idea. In forming this theory 
liberties are also confessedly taken with the floor in order to make 
it duly larger than the other six sides of the room, and to do so he 
theoretically lifts up the floor till it is placed higher than the very 
entrance to the chamber; for originally the floor and sides are 
otherwise too nearly alike in size to make a symbolic seven-sided 
room with one of the sides proportionally and properly larger than 
the other six sides. Yet Professor Smyth holds that, in the above 
typical way, he has “ shown,” or indeed “ proved entirely,” that the 
Sabbath had been heard of before Moses, and that thus he finds 
