Abstract
RECENT work at the Bureau international des Poids et Mesures is described in the volumes referred to below.1 The volumes, like their predecessors, are full of interest to the physicist concerned with exact measurements, and are a monument to the services rendered to science by the International Committee of Weights and Measures and the director and staff of the well-known institution at Sevres. Though twenty-two nations participate in the work of the committee, the total budget of the institution is limited by statute to 4000l. a year. This sum is made up by contributions by the different nations on a scale based on their respective populations, the latter being multiplied in each case by an appropriate factor, 1, 2, or 3, according as the metric system is not employed, is permissive, or is obligatory. The United Kingdom recently passed from Class (1) to Class (2), and, paying only on the population of the mother country, contributed, in 1907, 6339 francs, or about one-sixteenth of the total sum required.
Article PDF
References
“Procès-verbaux des Séances du Comité international de; Poids et Mesures“. Deuxième Série . Tome i. “Travaux et Mémoires du Bureau international des Poids et Mesures“. Tome xiii. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1907).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
International Physics . Nature 79, 194–195 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/079194a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/079194a0