Re: [USMA:9979] Re: "metric"Louis,
I never got around to sending more information from the book "Sizes".
>From that same book, I will quote from the author's 6.5 pages about the
meter.
>From page 166:"By the end of 1790 the Academy had placed the matter in the
hands of as illustrious a scientific commission as has ever existed:
Lagrange, Laplace, Borda, Monge and Condorcet. In their report to the
Academy on March 19, 1791, the commission recommended scrapping the seconds
pendulum. Instead, they suggested the new unity of length be one
ten-millionth of the distance at sea level from the pole to the equator."
Further down on page 164: "Borda, for example, a member of the commission,
had constructed extremely precise graduated circles for measuring angles,
just what would be needed for this sort of work. (His circles were
graduated in a new unit, the "grade" rather than degrees, which he sneered
at as 'Babylonian'.)"
>From page 166: "On April 7, 1795 an order establishing the names now in use
(meter, liter, gram) also reestablished the commission (except for
Lavoisier, who had been guillotined the previous year) and ordered
resumption of the survey."
I must comment that between these paragraphs, the commission was abolished,
recreated and memberships changed. Obviously Lavoisier was not mentioned on
the original commission. M�chain and Delambre undertook their work and the
rest is history.
I still don't know for whom 'metric' was named.
Norm
----- Original Message -----
From: Louis JOURDAN
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: 2000December27 00:48
Subject: [USMA:10064] Re: "metric"
At 1:17 -0500 00/12/22, James R. Frysinger wrote:
Everyone seems to want to reinvent my question. Here it is, again:
What person (name, please, and date if possible) was responsible for the
word "metric" to be used in the adjective form in the phrase "metric
system". It could have been called the "yay-big system", the "ten-sies
system", the "Republican Egalitarian Measuring System", or just "the
Jaques Henri d'Orle System". But it came to be called the "metric
system". Again who made that happen -- not why, not based on whatever
etymology -- just who? Borda has been nominated, perhaps borrowing from
Burattini. Some person must have said (in French, I'm sure), "Je sais,
mes amis, appelons-le le syst�me m�trique." Who? Forget "why"; that's
been covered.
Jim
Jim,
your question is a good question - which means that there is no good answer
to it !
I am not able to give a name (and a date) for a person responsible for term
"metric system", or for the exact name "decimal metric system".
Indeed, for a number of years after 1790, various terms were used for naming
"the new system of weights and measures", but never "the metric system".
In my documentation, the first official document which mentions "le syst�me
m�trique" is a declaration from the Ministry of the Interior of the King
Louis XVIII government, on 4 July 1814 : "L'�tablissement du syst�me
m�trique sera continu� sur le plan qui a �t� suivi jusqu'� maintenant " (the
development of the metric system will be pursued on the same basis as
followed till now). Please note the irony : the revolutionary metric system
rescued by a monarchy...
I suppose we cannot find a person who really coined the term "metric
system". Probably it developed by itself, until accepted by the general
population.
Louis
