Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

THE BUREAU AND THE METRIC SYSTEM 207
but the Secretary found an unfastened window and all three climbed in to see
the plane.117
And the Bureau found time to play. An avid reader of detective and
mystery novels, the President one morning sent a messenger to the Bureau
with an envelope bearing his seal. He had read the night before that such
a letter could be opened and resealed without any sign of tampering. Could
the Bureau do it too? A day later the President had his sealed letter back,
apparently intact. Inside was a note and the lead disks from which the
fraudulent seal replacing his seal had been made overnight.'18
THE BUREAU AND THE METRIC SYSTEM
The war not oniy forwarded the Bureau's efforts to induce American
industry to accept scientific measurements and methods in its operations; it
also for a time brought hope that its long endeavor to secure general adop-
tion of the metric system in this country might at last succeed. To its
proponents the simplicity of the metric system in common measures and its
advantages in scientific mensuration were overwhelming; to its opponents
the cost to industry of conversion and the inconvenience to the public seemed
insuperable. For years, a band of ardent antimetricists, supported by repre-
sentatives of engineering and textile interests and by a merchant-minded
Congress had repeatedly defeated metric legislation. Their success con-
vinced Dr. Strattton that only through education of the public might sufficient
pressure be generated to sway the lawmakers. The war offered an unexpected
opportunity to further that education.
On January 2, 1918, a War Department General Order announced that
the General Staff of the AEF in France had adopted the metric system and
that guns, munitions, and certain other materials produced in this country
and destined for the AEF would conform to metric measurements:
The metric system has been adopted for use in France for all firing
data for artillery and machine guns, in the preparation of opera-
tion orders, and in map construction. Artillery and machine-gun
material intended for service abroad is being graduated accordingly.
Instruction in the metric system will be. given to all
Alerted by the War Department, the Bureau at once ordered reprints
of a descriptive pamphlet of the international metric system and of a large
graphic wall chart derived from this pamphlet, both published by the Bureau
Redfield, With Congress and Cabinet, pp. 98—99.
118 Letter, Secretary of Commerce to President Wilson, Jan. 26, 1918 (NBS Box 10, IG).
War Department G.O. 1, Jan. 2, 1918, was based on AEF G.O. 65, Nov. 21, 1917.