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

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APPENDIX A
When he made known his need of an income, his new friends in the Philosophical
Society wrote to President Jefferson recommending Hassler's employment in a geodetic
survey of the coast then under consideration. On February 10, 1807, Congress appropri-
ated $50,000 for—
a survey to be taken of the coasts of the United States, in which shall be
designated the islands and shoals, with the roads or places of anchorage, within
twenty leagues of any part of the shores of the United States; and also the
respective courses and distances between the principal capes, or head lands,
together with such other matters as [the President] may deem proper for
completing an accurate chart of every part of the coasts within the extent
aforesaid.4
Of a number of plans solicited for conducting the survey, Hassler's proved most satis-
factory. It provided for the determination of true geographic positions by astronomical
means at key points near the coast, networks of precise triangulation between these
points, a topographical survey of the coast, and a hydrographic survey of coastal waters
controlled by triangulation.'
The President recommended that Hassler be appointed to carry out the work,
but the solicitations and more pressing affairs of state delayed action on the survey for
4 years.
While awaiting acceptance of his plans for the coast survey, Hassler secured a
place as acting professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at West Point, resigning
in February 1810 to teach natural science at Union College at Schenectady. He left a
year later when Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin commissioned him to go to London
to obtain the instruments he would need for the survey. Hassler had stipulated in
seeking the post that "good instruments are never to be obtained by buying in shops,
where only instruments of inferior quality are put up to sell; they must be made on
command and by the best mechanicians." He embarked with his family for Europe on
August 29, 1811, to seek out those mechanicians and direct the construction of his
instruments.
Hassler's eighth child and sixth son was born to his wife during the 4-year stay
in London and named Edward Troughton, after his next door neighbor and the chief
instrumentmaker supplying the equipment for the survey. Besides Hassler's reluctance
to hurry the construction of his instruments, delays arose when shortly after his arrival
war broke out between England and his country, and for a time he was detained in
London as an alien. Two years later while his family was living in Paris, England and
her allies invaded France, Napoleon escaped from Elba and, collecting troops as he went,
marched to his final battle. Hassler went to France to extricate his family.
Not all the instruments that Hassler ordered abroad were for the coast survey.
Some were for two astronomical observatories, as "a permanent national institution," that
Hassler planned, one in Washington or somewhere in the Southern States, the other
in the North. Not until his return were the President or Congress to learn of, and
defer, Hassler's "institution."
Quoted in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
Report of the National Museum, part II, A Memorial of George Brown Goode
* * * " [including his] history of science in America (Washington, D.C. 1901), p. 293.
Jefferson, anticipating war with Great Britain and aware that the only charts of the coast
were those of the early Dutch, English, and French colonists, proposed the survey to
Congress in 1806.
'A. Joseph Wraight and Elliott B. Roberts, "The Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1807—1957"
(Washington, D.C., 1957), p. 5.