1Enclosure: Report to the Academy of Sciences on a Unit of Measure, [19 March 1791] (Jefferson Papers)
The idea of founding the whole Science of measure upon an unit of length taken from nature, presented itself to mathematicians from the moment that they knew the existence of such an unit, and the possibility of determining it: they saw that this was the only means of excluding every thing arbitrary from the system of measures, and of being sure of preserving it at all times the same, without...