Book Description

Excerpt from The Metric System of Weights and Measures "The great utility of a standard, fixed in its nature, and founded on the easy rule of decimal proportions, is sufficiently obvious. It led the government, at an early stage, to preparatory steps for introducing it; and a completion of the work will be a just title to the public gratitude." - Madison, Annual Message of 1816. Washington felt the great importance of a "standard at once invariable and universal," and earnestly recommended it to the attention of the first Congress of the United States. Jefferson desired to reduce "every branch to the same decimal ratio already established in coins, and thus bring the calculation of the principal affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers." John Quincy Adams says of the Metric System: "Considered merely as a labor-saving machine, it is a new power offered to man incomparably greater than that which he has acquired by the new agency which he has given to steam. It is in design the greatest invention of human ingenuity since that of printing." It is not proposed here to defend the Metric System. It needs no defence. Since these great statesmen lived, and many others might be quoted, it has been adopted by the majority of nations, and seems destined very soon to become universal. If, however, like everything else that is useful, it has its enemies, these will be found to be principally composed of men who professedly do not know what it is. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.