Abstract
ON the occasion of a scientific expedition of which I had charge many years ago, the need of common standards of size for the parts of different astronomical and physical instruments was brought forcibly to mind; for the instruments used, while of the latest and best construction, were necessarily dismembered, and then transported in fragments to their scarcely accessible destination by numerous independent bearers; and if any accident happened to any fragment of any piece of apparatus, it was found, as a rule, that the whole was rendered useless, since it could not be replaced from the like parts of other pieces which were spared. The weapons of attack of the little scientific force were, then, in one important respect, far inferior to those of modern warfare, in that there had been no attempt to make their parts interchangeable.
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LANGLEY, S. Smithsonian Standards for Physical Apparatus. Nature 45, 197 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/045197b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/045197b0
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