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

APPENDIX A
FERDINAND RUDOLPH HASSLER
First Superintendent of the
Coast Survey and of
Weights and Measures
When Professor Stratton arrived at the Office of Weights and Measures on B Street in
Washington in the spring of 1898 to survey its equipment and operations, he found there
in the person of Louis A. Fischer, the adjuster, a link with Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler,
the first Superintendent of Weights and Measures in the Federal Government. It was
in the atmosphere of the office over which Hassler had presided, Stratton said,
with its sacred traditions concerning standards, its unsurpassed instrument shop,
its world-known experts in the construction and comparison of standards, and
especially in the most precise measurement of length and mass, that the boy
Fischer, scarcely over 16, found himself when he entered the employ of Govern-
ment in a minor capacity [about the year 18801. * * Scarcely 40 years had
passed since the end of Hassler's services and the beginning of Fischer's. His
first instructors were the direct disciples of Hassler and he knew and talked
with those who had come in personal contact with the first superintendent.1
Fischer's reminiscences concerning the early historyof the Weights and Measures office,
gathered from his association with the successors of Hassler, were never recorded, to
Stratton's regret, and the only biography of Hassler, by Florian Cajori, professor of
mathematics at the University of California, centers on his career in the Coast Survey
gathered from his association with the successors of Hassler, were never recorded, to
in the history of science in the Federal Government, is the principal source of the present
sketch.2
1 Stratton, "Address Memorializing Louis Albert Fischer, 1864.—1921," 15th Annual Con.
ference on Weights and Measures, May 23—26, 1922, NBS M51 (1922), p. 3.
2 Cajori, The Chequered Career of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, First Superintendent of
the United States Coast Survey: A Chapter in the History of Science in America
(Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1929).
The biography is a sound summary of the known facts about Hassler. It is based on
the numerous published reports Hassler made of his work for the Government; on the
Hassler correspondence in the Ford Collection of the New York Public Library; Rosalie
L. H. Norris's unpublished "Recollections" (written in Paris, 1856) in the Simon New-
comb Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and the papers in the Archives
of the American Philosophical Society. Considerable use is also made of the 558-page
work, Zschokke's Memoirs of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, published in Aarau,
Switzerland, 1877, with supplementary documents published in 1882, and translated by
Rosalie L. H. Norris (Nice: V.-Eng. Gauthier & Co., 1882). Zschokke's actual memoirs
occupy pp. 11—31, and a "Sketch of His Life" by Hassler himself, appears on pp. 35—40.
The bulk of the Memoirs, an omniurn-gatherum, comprises reports, newspaper accounts,
letters and other correspondence by or relating to Hassler.
515