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

APPENDiX B
him by Tralles. Thus from the outset Coast Survey operations in the United States
were based on a metric standard, and all base measurements of the Survey continued
to be referred to this meter until receipt of the national prototype in 1890.
Although arguments for uniformity were raised at almost every session
of Congress, the slow progress of the metric system in France did not encourage its
introduction in this country. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in his classic
report of 1821, prepared at the request of Congress, wrote that the French system
"approaches to the ideal perfection of uniformity applied to weights and measures
The meter will surround the globe in use as well as multiplied extension, and one language
of weights and measures will be spoken from the equator to the poles." Nevertheless,
Adams did not think its introduction practicable at that time, nor did Congress.
A degree of order in the weights and measures in common use was achieved by
Hassler when in 1838 his Office of Weights and Measures began delivering to the States
and a year later to the customhouses sets of standard weights, measures of length,
capacity measures, and balances, derived from yard and pound standards he had secured
in England. In 1893 the incumbent Superintendent of Weights and Measures, T. C.
Mendenhall, fixed their values by relating them to the international meter and kilogram.
To this day the United States has no legal material standard yard or pound.
USE OF THE METRIC SYSTEM MADE LEGAL
Not until after the Civil War did serious consideration of thi metric system arise
again, when on July 28, 1866, upon the advice of the National Academy of Sciences,
Congress authorized permissive and legal use of the metric system thoughout the Nation.
Another act directed the Secretary of the Treasury to furnish a sit of standard metric
weights and measures to each of the States, and a third act that year authorized use of
metric measures by the Post Office Department.14
As increasing numbers of scientists and professional men went to Europe in that
period for their education and returned trained in the metric system, interest in it
spread. About 1870 metric tables began to appear in American college textbooks,
particularly in chemistry and physics, and a decade later in high school textbooks.15
Such active reform groups as the American Metrological Society, established in New
York in 1873 (ceased publication in 1888), and the American Metric Bureau, founded
in Boston in 1876, sought nationwide acceptance and use of the metric system in place
of yards and pounds.'°
When in 1869 France first proposed to construct new metric standards, the
strong interest in this country led the Government to send delegates to Paris to participate
in the deliberations. Prof. Joseph Henry, the preeminent physicist in America at that
time, and Prof. Julius E. Hilgard, in charge of weights and measures in the Coast Survey,
Hallock and Wade, p. 117.
14 For a contemporary account of the provision of metric measures to the States, see
Prof. J. E. Hilgard's report to Congress in H. Misc. Doc. 61, 45th Cong., 2d sess., May 18,
1878.
'5Hallock and Wade, p. 125 a.
At the height of the movement, the first "society for opposing introduction of the
French Metric System in this country" was also formed, with the establishment in Boston
in 1879 of the International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights and Measures.
See Edward F. Cox, "The International Institute: First Organized Opposition to the
Metric System," Ohio Hist. Q. 68, 3 (1959).
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