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

APPENDIX A 521
"Hassler wanted his survey to be not only practically useful, but also a contribution
to the science of geodesy * * * on a par with European contributions * * Congress
had not the least idea of the coast survey as a science; to them it was an enterprise
no different from the survey of the Northwest Territory"—a simple matter of using
compass and chain and turning out maps and charts with regularity. After a year's
work Hassler had no maps to offer.7
The next decade was as bleak a period for Hassler as it was for the progress
of the survey. A week after militarization of the coast survey, President Monroe
appointed Hassler as one of the astronomers in the party sent to fIx the boundary line
with Canada in upper New York State, as provided in the treaty ending the War of
1812. A year later Hassler, in conflict with the U.S. Commissioner over his progress
and his expenses, resigned. He sought a professorship at Jefferson's University of
Virginia, still under construction. He considered returning to Europe, but his wife
would not consent. He decided to farm and teach, and in 1820, despite the known
severity of climate and his complete lack of experience as a farmer, he purchased a
tract of land at Cape Vincent in New York State, overlooking the Thousand Islands in
the St. Lawrence. There he planned, with characteristic enthusiasm, to establish a
normal school and agricultural college.
With high expectations, he sold at a sacrifice most of the furniture and all of
the pictures, statuary, and Sèvres porcelain in the house the family was then occupying
on the Commons in Newark, N.J., and almost all that was left of his original collection
of books. The remaining furniture was packed in two large Jersey wagons, and with
Hassler's wonderful instrument carriage, which he purchased when it was sold at
auction in 1819, the family set out on the 400-mile journey to Cape Vincent.
The house he had bought sight unseen in New York State for $1,000 proved
to be two 1-room log cabins. Gathering together the carpenters and masons in the
neighborhood, he began construction of a great 16-room house, destined to be com-
pleted but never occupied. Some farming was begun, but the pI'an for a college was
soon abandoned. In the spring of 1823, while Hassler was on one of his frequent
absences from home, perhaps attending a meeting of the Philosophical Society in
Philadelphia, and his children were in the fields, his wife gathered her personal
belongings and left him, never to return.
Leaving his eldest son in charge of the farm, Hassler soon after took a teaching
position at Union Hall Academy at Jamaica, Long Island, and brought the other chil-
dren to New York. When the Academy failed in 1827, he taught at another in
Richmond, Va, and continued to seek a university position. But his marked foreign
accent, his rather erratic temperament, and his age, then 55, were against him. Always
a tireless talker, he had also been a tireless writer, about his projects, his progress in
the survey work, his construction of instruments, his scientific observations delivered
before the Philosophical Society. Now he turned to writing textbooks, and with
some success found publishers for his "Elements of Analytical Trigonometry" (1826),
"Elements of Arithmetik, Theoretical and Practical" (1826), "Elements of Geometry of
Pldnes and Solids" (1828), "A Popular Exposition of the System. of the Universe with
Plates and Tables" (1830), and "Logarithmic and Trigonometric Tables" (1830). tlu'
latter with introductions published in five languages.
Hassler's undertaking, "which Congress supposed would be finished in a few years,
has now taken 150 years, and no end is in sight" Elliott B. Roberts, "United States
Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1807—1957," Ann. Rep., Smithsonian Institution, 1957,
p. 222. .