In July, 1790, Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, sent a report to Congress containing two plans, both based on the length of the pendulum, in this case the pendulum to be a plain bar, the one plan to use the system then existing, referring it to the pendulum as the basis, and the other to take the pendulum and subdivide it, one-third of the pendulum to be called a foot. The whole length was that of one beating seconds of time. He made a table to read as follows:
10 Points make a Line.
10 Lines make a Foot.
10 Feet make a Decad.
10 Decads make a Rood.
10 Roods make a Furlong.
10 Furlongs make a Mile.
Congress did not adopt his system, and as England was then working on the problem, it was decided to await the results of its labors. In 1816, Madison, in his inaugural address, brought the matter of standards to the attention of Congress, and a committee of the House made a report recommending the first plan of Jefferson, but the report was not acted upon. In 1821, J. Q. Adams, then Secretary of State, made a long and exhaustive report in which he favored the metric system, but still advised Congress to wait, and Congress—waited.
What the Standards are in the United States
The standard of length which had generally been accepted as the standard, was a brass scale 82 inches long, prepared by Troughton for the Coast Survey of the United States. The yard used was the 36 inches between the 27th and 63d inch of the scale. In 1856, however "Bronze No. 11" was presented to the United States by the British government. This is a duplicate of the No. 1 Bronze mentioned before, which is the legalized standard yard in England. It is standard length at 61.79 degrees F., and is the accepted standard in the United States. A bar of Low Moor iron, No. 57, was sent at the same time, and this is correct in length at 62.58 degrees F. The expansion of Bronze No. 11 is 0.000342 inch, and that of the iron bar is 0.000221 inch for each degree Fahrenheit. While the yard is the commonly accepted standard in this country, it is not the legal standard. In 1866 Congress passed a law making legal the meter, the first and only measure of length that has been legalized by our government. Copies of the meter and kilogram, taken from the original platinum bar at Paris, referred to before, were received in this country by the President and members of the Cabinet, on Jan. 2, 1890, and were deposited with the Coast Survey. By formal order of the Secretary of the Treasury, April 5, 1893, these were denominated the "Fundamental Standards."