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

524 APPENDIX A
thizing with a character having some traits in common with his own, granted
Hassler's demand.1°
Then in his middle sixties and going strong, Hassler wore flannel both summer
and winter, believing it kept off the heat as well as kept out the cold. He never used
glasses for reading or writing, but kept his vest pockets filled with snuff, which he was
convinced excited the optic nerves and was the only help his eyes needed. Working at
night at the Coast Survey office, first on 13th Street and later in adjoining row houses on
Capitol Hill, he had for light at his desk six or eight large wax candles, remolded from
commercial candles to about 2 inches in diameter with double or triple plaited wicks.u
His daughter Rosalie in her "Recollections" of her father was to say that he never went
to bed before 2 or 3, and finally lost the sight of one eye shortly before his death "by
the over fatigue in adjusting the yard and liquid measures." To the last his heavy
accent sometimes made it difficult to understand him, "but his singularities of manner,"
recalled a zealous friend in the House, Joseph L. Tillinghast of Rhode Island, "did not
touch his intelligence and eminent capacity in his vocation."
Between 1832 and 1841 Congress appropriated a total of $620,000 for the Coast
Survey offices. At Hassler's death in 1843 Survey funds had paid for the triangulation
of an area of 9,000 square miles, furnishing determinations of nearly 1,200 geodetic
stations for the delineation of 1,600 miles of shoreline. One hundred and sixty.eight
topographical maps had been surveyed and 142 hydrographic charts, although only 5
large charts were engraved and ready for publication.12
In the Weights and Measures Office, Hassler saw complete sets of weights with
their multiples and submultiples finished and delivered to the customhouses and to
the States. Half of the capacity measures and a third of the measures of length were
constructed, but 13 years would pass before the last of them, and the necessary balances,
were delivered.
The summer and fall of 1843 found Hassler, now 73, in the field, surveying in
New Jersey and Delaware. in a rain and sleet storm that October he fell and injured
himself on a rock while trying to save the tent protecting one of his instruments. As
a result of the injury and exposure he developed a fever and inflammation of the lungs
that forced him to go home to Philadelphia for medical help, where Rosalie could
look after him.
During his last weeks he wrote out his annual report to the Secretary of the
Treasury. The comprehensive plan for the continuation and expansion of the work that
he outlined in the report had already been approved by the President. Its execution
was begun by his successor, Alexander Dallas Bache, and the plan remained the basis
for survey operations until the enabling act of 1947 established a new, but not greatly
10 Reported by T. C. Mendenhall in 1916 and by Cajori in 1929, at least two versions of
this anecdote existed prior to 1900, in E. Zschokke's Memoirs, pp. 529—530, and in Harper's,
58, 508 (1878—79). It was therefore very much alive in 1900 when Secretary of the
Treasury Lyman Gage retold it as his own story, with reference to Dr. Stratton's proposed
salary. See ch. I, p. 45.
Admiral Richard Wainwright, who came to the Survey just after Hassler's death, said
he "knew the old office building thoroughly, from the weights and measures in the base-
ment to the computers' rooms in the attic." Centennial Celebration of the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey (Washington, D.C., 1916), p. 91.
11 For an account of Hassler's search for high grade copper plates in this country,
Austria, and France, and his importation of two highly trained engravers from Hamburg,
see Cajori, p. 216.