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

APPENDIX A
According to Dr. Lewis V. Jud%son, who came to the weights and measures division of
the Bureau in 1917, this plaque or nameplate in gold with Hassler's name in black
letters was brought from the Office of Weights and Measures on New Jersey Avenue
to Connecticut Avenue by Mr. Fischer.
altered statement of functions. Hassler continued to work, writing in his journal, until
shortly before his death on November 20, 1843.
He left behind his daughter Rosalie Lätitia Norris; his eldest son John James
Scipio, a topographical assistant in the Coast Survey; Edward Troughton. in the Weights
and Measures Office; Charles August, a surgeon in the Navy; Ferdinand Eugene,
consul at Panama; and his second daughter, Caroline, a childlike woman of 43, in the
care of Rosalie. His three other sons had died under age or in infancy. His wife
Marianne, whom he saw just once briefly a few years after she left home, lived with friends
for a number of years, then with her eldest son in Pennsylvania, later with Rosalie in
New Brunswick, and finally with friends on Long Island, where her death occurred in
1858 at the age of 86. Hassler left no debts at this death, nor did he leave any money
either. The farm at Cape Vincent was all that his surviving children inherited.
Tribute to Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler as the first scientist of rank in the employ
of the Federal Government has increased with the years. His genius lay in the design
of instruments for his geodetic work and in his tireless efforts to contrive the best pos-
sible standards of weights and measures with the best possible materials. He was
dogmatic and uncompromising, qualities destructive in his personal life, perhaps, but
true to the spirit of inquiry. As his biographer, Cajori, says, he "stands out greatest in
perceiving what was best in the practical geodesy of his time, in making improvements
upon what he found, and then clinging [without compromise to what] he had initiated
as being the best that the science of his day had brought forth."
At the centennial celebration of the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1916, with
its many tributes to Hassler, it was said:
To him belongs the credit that to-day the operations of the Survey are bound
together by a trigonometric survey with long lines and executed by the most
accurate instruments and the most refined methods.
Dr. Stratton on that occasion called him—
not only the first and foremost man in the scientific work of our country at
that time but one of the leading * * * metrologists of his day. I doubt if
there were more than half a dozen people in the world at that time who
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