Before action is taken upon this resolution, I would make a verbal correction. I think that the word "mean" ought to be introduced before the word "midnight" and I therefore alter my resolution in that way.
The vote was then taken upon the resolution just offered, and it was carried without division.
The President. The Chair begs leave to state that the protocols in French and in English of the first and second sessions of the Conference, have been examined, and are now before the Conference for adoption. If any Delegate wishes to make any correction in these protocols, he can submit it to the Conference, and, if approved, it can be immediately made.
No objection was raised, and the President put the question to the Conference on the adoption of the protocols of the first and second sessions in French and English, and they were unanimously adopted.
M. Janssen, Delegate of France. Mr. President, we have been directed to present for the approval of the Congress the desire that studies relative to the application of the decimal system to the division of angular space and of time should be resumed in order that this application may be extended to all cases—and they are numerous and important—where it presents real advantages.
I would say that a similar desire upon the same subject was expressed by the Conference at Rome.
You are aware, gentlemen, that at the time of the establishment of the metrical system the decimal division had been extended to the measurement of angular space and of time. Numerous instruments were even made according to the new system. As to time, the reform was introduced too abruptly, and, we might say, without enough discretion, and it came into conflict with old habits and was quickly abandoned; but as to the division of angular space, in which the decimal division presented many advantages, the reform sustained itself much better, and is still used for certain purposes. So, the division of the circumference into 400 parts was adopted by Laplace, and we find it constantly employed in the Mécanique Celeste. Delambre and Mechain used, for the measurement of the are of the meridian from which the metre was derived, repeating circles divided into "grades." Finally, in our own time, Colonel Perrier, Chief of the Geographical Division of our Department of War, has used instruments decimally divided, and at the present time logarithmic tables appropriate to that method of division are in course of calculation.
But it is especially when it is a question of making long calculations of angular space that the decimal system presents great advantages. In this respect we find, so to speak, only one opinion expressed by scientists.
The Conference at Rome, which brought together so many astronomers, geodetists, eminent topographers—that is to say, the men most competent and most interested in the question—expressed in respect to it a desire, the high authority of which it is impossible to mistake.
It is, therefore, now evident that the decimal system, which has already done such good service in the measurements of length, volume, and weight, is called upon to render analagous services in the domain of angular dimensions and of time.