Abstract
THE statutory decennial comparisons of the Imperial standards of length and mass with their Parliamentary copies became due in 1932. On the last occasion, in 1922, they were carried out at the Standards Department of the Board of Trade under the supervision of Mr. J. E. Sears, Jr., the superintendent of the Metrology Department of the Laboratory, who was at that time acting also as deputy warden of the standards. By a subsequent agreement between the Board of Trade and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, it was arranged that the National Physical Laboratory should in future undertake the whole of these comparisons on behalf of the Board. The present series of comparisons is accordingly being carried out at the Laboratory. The primary object of the comparisons is the verification of the Parliamentary copies of the Imperial Standard Pound and Yard, any one of which could be used to replace the corresponding Imperial standard should it suffer loss or destruction. There are for each standard five Parliamentary copies; one is immured in Westminster Palace, and one each of the others is in the custody of the Royal Society, the Mint, Greenwich Observatory and the Standards Department.
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Imperial Standard Measures. Nature 132, 198 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132198c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132198c0