HC Deb 25 July 1864 vol 176 cc2015-6
MR. DOULTON

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether the Exchequer Standards of Weight and Measure have been adjusted and reverified, in pursuance of an assurance given by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the 29th of July, 1862, to the effect, "that measures had already been taken for the accomplishment of that object;" whether the Standards recently taken out of the wall of Parliament have been compared with those at the Exchequer; and, if so, whether any and what discrepancy was found to exist; and whether any Report has been received from the Astronomer Royal, as chairman of the Standard Committee, relative to such comparison?

MR. PEEL

said, in reply, that early in the present year the Treasury asked the surviving members—seven or eight in number—of the National Standard Commission, to examine the original Standards of Weights and Measures, and the Astronomer Royal had made a Report, in which he said— The Controller General of the Exchequer produced for the inspection of the members the National or Parliamentary Standard of Length (duly identified by its distinguishing marks as described in the Standard Act), which was examined by all the members present with the aid of powerful microscopes, and was judged by all to be in so perfect a state that no comparison with the Parliamentary copies was necessary. As regarded the Standard of Weight, Professor Airy said— The three Parliamentary copies of the Weight Standard were collected on March the 14th; and, on March the 15th, Professor W. H. Miller recompared the Parliamentary Standard of Weight with them under favourable circumstances. The apparent change of weight of the Parliamentary Standard was less than 1–5,000,000th of the whole—a quantity within errors of observation, and implying no real change. As regarded the copies of the Exchequer Standards deposited in the wall of the recess in the Lower Waiting Room of Westminster Palace, he says— In the presence of the Committee, the leaden box of the immured Standards was opened, and the Parliamentary copy of the Standard of Length was examined with Mr. Simm's microscopes, and that of Weight by general inspection. Both were in the finest possible order.