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

532 APPENDIX B
The preparation of the standards, the tracing of the defining lines, and com-
parison with the standards of the Archives were carried out by the French section of
the International Bureau. In 1889, at the First General Conference of Weights and
Measures, the prototype units were selected and deposited in a multiple-locked sub-
terranean vault located between the pavilion and observatory of Sèvres. Distribution
of the remaining identical meters and kilograms began, the national copies of the
meter said to agree with the international unit within one-hundredth of a millimeter
and with a probable error not exceeding two ten-thousandths of a millimeter. The
copies of the kilogram agreed within 1 milligram, with a probable error not exceeding
five-thousandths of a milligram. Two thermometers reading to one-hundredth of a
degree Centegrade accompanied each pair of national standards.
The initial copies of the international prototype meter and kilogram allotted
to the United States, meter No. 27 and kilogram No. 20, arrived in Washington in
January 1890 and with appropriate ceremonies were deposited in a fireproof room at
the Office of Weights and Measures in the Coast Survey building. The following
July, meter No. 2 and kilogram No. 4 were received and deposited with those accepted
as the national standards.
The new U.S. standards, meter No. 27 and kilogram No. 20, were formally
recognized by an order of the Secretary of the Treasury on April 5, 1893, as the basis
for deriving the customary units, the yard and pound, and for constructing and
standardizing secondary metric standards. Over the next decade, efforts to legislate
adoption of metric weights and measures as the universal standards in this country came
closer to realization than at any time in the history of the Nation. Such legislation,
seeking uniformity in weights, measures, and coinage, had been under consideration
since the Colonies joined in the Articles of Confederation.
THE AMERICAN ATTITUDE TOWARD THE METRIC SYSTEM
The Colonies were in the midst of their war for independence when the question
of uniform coinage was raised by Thomas Jefferson. The decimal system he urged
was finally adopted by Congress on July 6, 1785, and a law of 1828 established a brass
weight obtained by the Minister of the United States at London as the standard troy
pound of the U.S. Mint for the control and stabilization of the currency.
From the first, President after President and the successive Secretaries of the
Treasury appealed to Congress for uniformity in the weights and measures, as well
as the currency, "a subject of great importance," as Washington declared in 1789, "and
will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to."
Shortly after adoption of decimal coinage, Jefferson, disapproving of a unit
derived from an arc of meridian determined on European soil, proposed instead decimal
weights and measures based on a foot derived by taking one-fifth of the length of a
rod forming the seconds pendulum.12 A Senate committee in 1792 reported favorably
on its adoption but Congress took no legislative action. Nor was Congress moved by
the President's report in 1795 announcing adoption in France of the metric system
and urging its adoption also in America.
The Coast Survey was the first Federal agency to require a definite length
standard. Its Superintendent, chose the iron-bar standard copied by Lenoir
of Paris in 1799 from the Meter of the Archives (the U.S. Committee Meter), given
Hallock and Wade, p. 112.