Published Resources Details
Journal Article
- Title
- Australian Standards
- In
- Transactions of the Institution of Engineers, Australia
- Imprint
- vol. 9, 1928, pp. 91-106
- Url
- https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.264974779686748
- Description
Read before the Sydney Division
- Abstract
The object of this paper is to present to members of this Institution a statement of the position to-day in regard to physical standards and their maintenance; also to compare the position of Australia and its States with that of other countries, and to offer some suggestions in regard to methods which could be adopted with advantage in securing for Australia a means of maintaining National Standards of physical quantities, not only economically and efficiently but also in such a way that their copies could be transferred readily and made available so as to aid in the development of national industry. The march of civilisation has brought with it an ever increasing need for greater accuracy in measurement and correspondingly higher precision in the determination of physical units. The question of weights and measures is intimately related with that of coinage, so much so that under the Constitution of the United States, Article I. Congress is given power 'to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and to fix the standard of weights and measures.' It requires very little consideration to see that the control of weights and measures is just as important as the control of coinage, and that the difficulties which will obviously arise from lack of control in regard to the latter must arise also in the case of the former. In fact, all that money can have to do with is inseparably associated with the results of weighing and measuring in some form or other.