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

534 APPENDIX B
and later Superintendent of the Survey, were sent to join the committee that assembled
in 1872 to oversee the work of construction. On May 20, 1875, when the American
Minister to France, Elihu B. Washburn, signed the Metric Convention that established the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures, commitment of the United States to the
principle of international metric measures was formalized.17
The arrival of the national prototype meter and kilogram in 1890 again stirred
interest in reform. Early in 1894 the Army Surgeon General's Office, following the
Marine Hospital Service and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, directed use of
the metric system in all transactions pertaining to medical supplies, and Congress moved
a step closer when its act of July 12, 1894, defined the national units of electrical
ments in the new international metric terms.18 In another affirmation, continuation of the
metric system, in everyday use in both Puerto Rico and the Philippines when they became
a protectorate and possession, respectively, of the United States in 1898, was con-
firmed. And a known champion of the metric system was raised to bureau status
in the Federal Establishment when the Office of Weights and Measures became the
National Bureau of Standards in 1901.
Besides acquiring new standards for promulgation in American science and
industry, the Bureau was also concerned with reverifying its existing standards. In
1904 Louis A. Fischer took meter No. 27 to Paris for comparison with the standards
at the International Bureau and redetermined its value in terms of the International
Prototype. The minute difference that Fischer reported, in the first scientific paper
published by the Bureau, had little significance at that time; and since the relation of
No. 27 to No. 21, the other national prototype, was accurately known, the Bureau con-
sidered its standards quite sufficient to guarantee the accuracy and permanency of the
measures in the United States.1°
LEGISLATION FOR THE METRIC SYSTEM
Legislation around the turn of the century for replacement of customary measures
with the metric system appeared increasingly imminent and each bill won stronger
support than the last. In 1896 a bill to make mandatory the metric system received
unanimous recommendation for adoption by the House Committee on Coinage, Weights,
and Measures, only to fail of passage in its third reading. Another bill in 1901 was
received too late to be considered by the Congress then in session. Hearings were held
on similar bills again in 1902 and 1903, and although none proposed compulsory ac-
ceptance but only gradual extension of the metric system into universal use, they suc-
cumbed in committee. So did a new bill in 1905 that sought establishment of the metric
system in all transactions and activities of the Federal Government, whence, it was
thought, its use would filter down to industry and eventually to the general public.
A notable impetus towards wider acceptance of the metric system loomed in
1914—15 when American industries supplying the French with war materiel necessarily
converted their plants to the metric system. The conversion in industry became wide-
spread in 1917—18 when the American armies in France adopted the metric system not
only in ordnance and instrumentation but in all operational computations. But the
armies did not bring the metric system home with them, and American industry reverted
to its former habits when the war production lines stopped.
Hallock and Wade, pp. 129—130.
Ibid., pp. 195—196, 208—210.
NBS S1,"Recomparison of the United States Prototype Meter" (1904).