base: 48 cm x 41.3 cm x 16.25 cm; 18 7/8 in x 16 1/4 in x 6 3/8 in
Object Name:
Balance
Object Type:
Balances
Place made:
United States: District of Columbia
Date made:
ca. 1843
Presented to British government:
July 1843
Description:
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler (1770-1843) was a Swiss-native who arrived in the United States in 1805, well-trained in science and mathematics. Two years later, when Congress authorized a survey of the nation’s coasts, he was named head of the project. Because no suitable American instruments were to be had in at that time, Hassler went to London for that purpose. But the English instrument makers were slow, and the War of 1812 intervened, and so the Coast Survey did not get underway until 1816. It was abolished the following year, as politicians concerned with the purse did not appreciate Hassler’s pursuit of precision.
While Hassler was cooling his heels, Americans were recognizing problems caused by variations in their weights and measures. Accordingly, in 1830, Congress authorized an Office of Weights and Measures that would provide standards for the Custom Houses, the States, and the Territories, and President Andrew Jackson put Hassler in charge of this operation. When the Coast Survey was reauthorized a few years later, Hassler was again put in charge, and he took this new project with him. In 1901, the Office of Weights and Measures was moved into the newly organized National Bureau of Standards.
This precision balance is one of several that were built under Hassler’s direction in the Office of Weights and Measures. It was presented to the Government of Great Britain in July 1843, by resolution of the Congress of the United States, after a fire in the Houses of Parliament destroyed the British standards.
The “E. Hassler / 1843” inscription on the nameplate refers to Edward Troughton Hassler (1813-1844), F.R. Hassler’s son who worked on weights and measures project.
Ref: Florian Cajori, <i<The Chequered Career of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, First Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey</i> (Boston, 1929).
Arthur Frazier, “United States Standards of Weights and Measures,” <i>Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology</i> 40 (1978).
