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

APPENDIX A 517
Geodetics became their hobby, and in 1791, with apparatus and funds supplied
by Hassler, the two began mapping the area around Berne. Since even tolerable maps
of any part of the canton did not exist then, the town fathers encouraged the project,
seeing that it would promote better land utilization and development. Among the
difficulties that confronted Tralles and Hassler was the lack of precise instruments and
measurement standards, and so began young Hassler's lifelong preoccupation with
instrumentation. Between field expeditions, Hassler traveled to Paris and the university
towns of Germany to attend courses, collect books for his growing library, and acquire
better instruments and standards for the survey work. His friend Tralles in that same
period, as deputy of the Helvetic Republic, was to participate in the establishment of
the metric system in France.
The French Revolution of 1798 brought rebellion and French military occupation
to Switzerland. That same year Hassler, now 28 and a prominent local official, married
Marianne Gaillard, daughter of a schoolteacher. Of a cheerful disposition and great
social ambitions, Marianne was not of a very domestic turn and is said to have con-
cerned herself little with the seven sons and two daughters she subsequently bore
Hassler.
Under some harassment from the new political regime, and his association with
Tralles severed when the latter left to become a member of the Academy of Science in
Berlin, Hassler in 1804 joined with a chance acquaintance to organize a stock company
for the purchase of large tracts of land in South Carolina, or possibly Louisiana, and
there found a Swiss colony. On May 15, 1805, Hassler left his native land with his
wife, four children, servants, and 96 trunks and bales for the trip down the Rhine.
He had also engaged 120 laborers, artisans, and craftsmen, with their families, to estab-
lish the colony, defraying all their expenses. At Amsterdam he chartered the 350-ton
ship Liberty, out of Philadelphia, and on October 18 after a 6-week voyage the company
arrived at that port.
His partner, who had sailed earlier, had in the meantime speculated with the
funds entrusted to him and lost them. To maintain his family while waiting for
remittances from his father, Hassler sold many of the works of art he had brought
with him. He assisted his company of colonists to find new places and, determined not
to return home, applied for American citizenship.
Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia, the seat of Government at that time,
he met and was cordially welcomed by his compatriot Albert Gallatin, Secretary of
the Treasury, and introduced to President Jefferson. Through them he became a
member of the American Philosophical Society in 1807. To the Society he later sold
some of his instruments and standards in order to maintain his family, and to the
Library of Congress part of his scientific library of about 3,000 volumes.
Hassler came to America intending to lead a rural life as steward of the colony
he planned to establish somewhere in the South. His mathematical books and in-
struments were to be his recreation, and his youthful interest in triangulation and
astronomy only recollections of former employments. Instead, a year after his arrival,
his possessions much reduced, he settled on a small farm on the banks of the Schuylkill,
north of Philadelphia, and began looking for an occupation. He was now 35, possessed
of a hardy constitution, considerable learning, but with few immediate prospects. Like
many of the well-educated of his time he knew Latin and spoke several languages, in
his case German, French, Italian, and English, the latter clear but heavily accented
and unidiomatic. Besides his training and experience in political science and juris-
prudence, he had an extensive knowledge of mathematics and a good knowledge of
chemistry, mineralogy, and all the other branches of natural philosophy. And he was
versed in astronomy and practical geodetics.