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September 2016 • SMT Magazine 61 THE CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were soon to have their heads separated from their bodies during the terror in early 1793. Here is the rest of the story. As Secretary of State in 1791, Jefferson pro- posed to Congress a decimal system. The system had as its basis the length of a pendulum that had a period of one second of time (at a point on the earth at a latitude of 45 degrees (i.e., Par- is, France—could King Louis refuse?). One sec- ond of time was relatively easy to measure and very repeatable since it was based on the elapsed time it took the earth to rotate once on its axis— one day (divided into 86,400 parts or seconds). Ingenious, really—tying the standard for length to time, and time to the physical invari- ance of the earth's rotation! The Senate committee tasked with institut- ing a standard system accepted Jefferson's pro- posal. They further suggested the pendulum length be divided into five equal parts, each one called a foot. The foot would be subdivided into 10 equal parts called an inch. What was need- ed for full congressional approval was the agree- ment for adoption by England or France, prefer- ably both. Two factors caused the project to get mired down: 1. France did not accept Jefferson's method. They chose instead the labor-intensive, protract- ed method of physically measuring the meridi- an. For the needed accuracy they would measure the meridian from Dunkirk, France to Barcelo- na, Spain—about 9.5 degrees of the total merid- ian's pole-to-equator 90.0 degrees. 2. U.S./Native American hostilities in the Northwest Territory. The first was problematic. There was a sense of urgency in the U.S. It was considered critical by Jefferson and others that the U.S. had a stan - dard system of measurement to lend credence to the settling of the Northwest Territory. The second factor actually bought the U.S. govern- ment time since it greatly slowed down settle- ment and surveying. By the early 1793, the latest attempt by the French to measure the meridian was still not complete—it would take years. So, the French settled on the length of the meter based on prior meridian surveys. In addition, it defined a stan- dard weight: the kilogram as the weight of one cubic decimeter of water. In the meantime, in the U.S., wars with the Native Americans continued. This significantly slowed settlement in the Northwest and bought time for adoption of a standardized measure- ment system. Time ran out in 1795. The Native Ameri- can wars were winding down (for now) and the signing of Jay's Treaty that once and for all end- ed England's claim to the territory. There was a mad rush to settle the land and still no metric- based, standard measurement system in place. The attempt to get the U.S. to agree to the French standards of the meter and the kilogram was scuttled when an attempt to provide the U.S. with a physical rod that was one meter long and a weight that was one kilogram had big problems making it across the ocean. By the time these physical samples finally made it to Philadel - phia in 1794, Jefferson had retired to Monticel- lo. Congress continued to kick around a standard system, never seeing the French physical sam- ples, and would never come to adopting a met- ric-based system, much less the specific French standards of the meter and the kilogram. The Northwest Territory was surveyed using the stan- dard length provided by the "Gunter chain" that was based on increments of 4, not 10. And, that's why in the U.S. there are still 12 inches in a foot and not 10, and an American football field is 100 yards long (90.46 meters), not 100 meters long. We see in this example that goes back to the country's founding how politics can drive poli- cy, and how the people's will and interest can be thwarted by their elected representatives. How " There was a mad rush to settle the land and still no metric- based, standard measurement system in place. "