THE EVOLUTION OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES AND THE METRIC SYSTEM BY WILLIAM HALLOCK, PH.D. PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK AND HERBERT T. WADE EDITOR FOR PHYSICS AND APPLIED SCIENCE, THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. 1906 67 PREFACE. IN the following pages it has been the aim of the authors to present in simple and non-technical language, so far as possible, a comprehensive view of the evolution of the science of metrology as it is now understood. Inasmuch as the introduction of the Metric System into the United States and Great Britain is a topic of more or less general interest at the present time, it has seemed that a work designed both for the student of science and for the general reader, in which this system is discussed in its relation to other systems of weights and measures past and present, would fill a certain need. While there are many works on metrology that treat at considerable length the historic and scientific sides of the subject, as well as the economic and archaeological questions involved, and a large number of books and pamphlets dealing with the teaching of the Metric System, besides those supplying tables and formulas for converting from one system to the other, yet there is apparently a distinct lack of works, which in small compass discuss the subject comprehensively from its many points of view. Indeed, the student of metrology is apt to be embarrassed by an extensive literature rather than by any deficiency in the amount of collected material, though much of the latter, to be sure, is included in various Reports and Proceedings of learned societies and official documents rather than in single works. A large amount of this literature devoted to metrology represents a minute specialization and critical analysis. often discussing either a certain epoch, or a single system or group of weights and measures, where the treatment is from the standpoint of either archaeology, economics, or physical or mathematical science, and but rarely combining the three points of 151102 |