464 
JULIUS ERASMUS HILGARD. 
After the appointment of a successor to Bache, Hilgard con¬ 
tinued as assistant in charge of the office, giving much of his 
time to the office of weights and measures, which was prac¬ 
tically under his direction. He took an active part in 
shaping legislation relating to the introduction into this 
country of the metric system, and prepared the standards 
of that denomination which were distributed to the various 
States of the Union. 
In 1872 he made telegraphic longitude determinations 
between Europe and America, including in his operations 
Paris and Greenwich, and thus obtained the first reliable 
telegraphic difference of longitude between those great ob¬ 
servatories, an operation to which it was his wont to refer 
as a diplomatic triumph. He also represented the United 
States officially as scientific delegate to the international 
convention convoked at Paris for the purpose of forming an 
international bureau of weights and measures. As vice- 
president he took an active part in the councils of the 
commission, and after the plans had been formulated and 
agreed to he was offered the directorship of the bureau, an 
offer marking the esteem in which his abilities were held 
by that body of eminent men composing the commission ; 
but he declined it. 
At the Centennial Exposition, held in Philadelphia in 
1876, he acted as one of the judges on scientific and me¬ 
chanical apparatus, being associated in that duty with some 
of the ablest scientists of Europe and America, and at about 
the same time he delivered a course of lectures at Johns 
Hopkins University on extended territorial surveying. He 
remained in charge of the office until the end of 1880, when 
he was appointed superintendent. 
Hilgard’s mind, in so far as his professional duties were 
concerned, was eminently practical. While directing large 
interests on the broadest plans, he grasped and gave atten¬ 
tion to the minute and varied details of the work entrusted 
to him, introducing economies, by perfecting methods, in 
many ways, as, for instance, in substituting tapeline meas- 
