Weights & Measures Section history

Thomas Jefferson was an early advocate of the metric system and in an 1821 report to Congress, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams urged its acceptance.

The 1824 act sanctioned a single imperial gallon to replace the wine, ale, and corn (wheat) gallons then in…

Disturbed by the evidence of discrepancies in the customhouse standards such as had been revealed by Adams, the Senate in 1830 ordered an investigation.

By 1838 the weights for the States were reported finished, and during the following year the weights for the custom-houses were completed and delivered.

Starting in 1848 Massachusetts issued to each city and town a Howard & Davis Weights and Measures Scale, encased in a wooden cabinet, to ensure that weights and measures were accurate and standardized throughout the state.

Connecticut, until 1850, maintained its legal bushel equivalent to 2,198 cubic inches.

Despite hostility to making the metric system the official United States system of weights and measures, its use was authorized in 1866.

In 1893 the Office of Weights and Measures announced that the prototype meter and kilogram would be recognized as fundamental standards from which customary units, the yard and the pound, would be derived.

The international acceptance of the metric system led Congress in 1968 to authorize a study to determine whether the United States should convert.

Though the resulting 1971 report recommended shifting to the metric system over a ten-year period, Congress declined to pass appropriate legislation