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

516 APPENDIX A
Hassler, a man highly trained in mathematics and of great practical ability as a
scientist, had scant talent in the art of living and even less in the management of
everyday affairs. Proud, improvident, singleminded in his pursuit of precision, and
intolerant of expediency, he was destined by events to a life of unending storm and
stress. Had not revolution in Europe brought him to America, he might have found
his place in the scientific community abroad. The political and economic climate of
the New World had room for the practical, the philosophical scientist, but little for
the often impractical but wholly dedicated man of science such as Hassler.8
He was born in the town of Aarau, in the northern or German part of Switzer-
land, on October 7, 1770, his father a member of a distinguished family, a prosperous
watch manufacturer, and high local official. At 16, Hassler entered the institute that
was later to be the University of Berne and there came under the influence of Johann
Georg Tralles, a young professor of mathematics and physics, who turned Hassler from
the study of law to mathematics, astronomy, and geodesy.
The scientific climate Hassler found in America is well depicted in Brooke Hindle's
The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735—1789 (University of North
Carolina Press, 1956), especially pp. 79, 84, 255—256, 327.
An engraving of young Hassler, probably made sometime in the 1790's. From the
scenery and the spyglass in Hassler's hand, it may be inferred that he and his friend
Tralles were at that time mapping the area around Berne, Switzerland. Less than
a decade later, Hassler left for America.