Whatever Happened to the Metric System? : How America Kept Its Feet (9781608199419) by Marciano John Bemelmans

Author:Marciano, John Bemelmans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2014-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

Europe Divided and United

As the 1867 Exposition Universelle entered its final month, the International Conference on Geodesy got under way in Berlin. It was part of the largest cooperative, international scientific undertaking in history, with echoes of the original meter survey and Laplace’s 1799 conference that poured over its results. The project was, in essence, a joint survey of Central Europe. At the time, national maps fit together like the pieces of different jigsaw puzzles, having been created using varying prime meridians and measures. Unlike in the U.S. with the Coast Survey, the meter was little used by geodesists in Europe, who continued to employ the old toise; that the meter was not yet the measuring stick of those who measured the earth had long been one of the great knocks against it.

At the conference, a strong consensus emerged that the transnational survey go forward using the meter, but only if the meter were fixed. And not only in terms of a new physical standard; delegates wanted to create an organization of international professionals to oversee construction of a new meter and administer it. The resolutions they passed had extra bite because the Central European survey was a prestige project of Prussia and had the weight of that increasingly powerful nation behind it. When the North German Confederation announced it would go metric as of January 1, 1872, it was fair to wonder whether it would be using the French version of the system or something different.

The turn of events did not sit entirely well in certain quarters of French science, where some believed the meter and kilogram to be both sacred relics and their perpetual property. France had neglected to send any representatives to the geodesy summits in Berlin, and there was a general anxiety over the ascendancy of Prussian science and the feeling of having been eclipsed. There was also fear that a new meter would be established without French involvement, based on the new measure of the earth that the Central European survey would provide.

Fortunately, good sense won out over wounded national pride, and France got behind efforts to create a new meter, with Napoleon III sending out invitations for a new international metric conference to take place in the fall of 1870. Most could see that German adoption of the metric system was a great victory for a French creation, making it no longer a purely Latin instrument. There was also reason to believe that the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation would next adopt the franc.

Austria, Sweden, Spain, Greece, and a gaggle of smaller states had all either joined or were in the process of joining the Latin Union, or had begun to strike coins based on its standards. New applications were coming from as far afield as Brazil. Senator Sherman had put forth legislation to adopt the franc in America, while in Britain the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new Liberal government supported modifying the sovereign to conform to international standards. The idea of one

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