The Metric System

Abstract

IT may not be within the recollection of your readers, and very unlikely to be so in that of the British public, that so far back as 1870–71 the Government of India, in the Governor-General's Council, passed an Act to introduce the metric system into the British dominions in India. However, as all Acts passed by that Government and its Council require the prior sanction of the Secretary of State for India in Council, the measure failed to take its place on the Statute Book of the Empire. His Grace the Duke of Argyle was at that time at the India Office, and it is a matter for much regret that he did not see fit to approve of the measure. That the Government of India did not expect that the Act would be vetoed, is proved by the fact of its having adopted the system in the State Railway Branch of the Public Works Department, then but recently formed. Sir Guildford Molesworth, K.C.I.E., then Consulting Engineer to the Government of India for Railways, published a series of type drawings dimensioned in the metric system. The Government further adopted the metre as the gauge of the narrow-gauge system then introduced for the first time by them. All the platform and other weighing machines sent out were so arranged as to weigh in kilogrammes, tons, and maunds. Had the wise policy of the late Lord Mayo been then approved of, the English commercial and scientific public would not now be clamouring for its adoption in the mother-country, as its great advantages would be patent to all.