User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox
History
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution grants the U.S. Congress the power to "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures". In accordance with that, in June 1836, The U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a joint resolution establishing a U.S. Office of Weights and Measures within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. From that date until March 1901, the Office of Weights and Measures was administered mostly by the U.S. Coast Survey[1] within the U.S. Department of the Treasury.[2] Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, a professor of mathematics, served as the head of U.S. Coast Survey as well as the Office of Weights and Measures from 1836 to 1843.[3][4]
In 1899, Henry Smith Pritchett (then head of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey) asked Samuel W. Stratton to
- ↑ Later renamed as the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USCG&S)
- ↑ There were some time periods during which the U.S. Army and/or the U.S. Navy administered the USCG&S
- ↑ Ferdinand Rudolph Hessler
- ↑ A Historic Review of Weights and Measures in the United States
- ↑ David F. Noble (1979). America by Design: Science, Technology, and The Rise of Corporate Capitalism. Oxford Press. ISBN 0-19-502618-7.