A History of the National Bureau of Standards
APPENDIX A FERDINAND RUDOLPH HASSLER First Superintendent of the Coast Survey and of Weights and Measures When Professor Stratton arrived at the Office of Weights and Measures on B Street in Washington in the spring of 1898 to survey its equipment and operations, he found there in the person of Louis A. Fischer, the adjuster, a link with Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, the first Superintendent of Weights and Measures in the Federal Government. It was in the atmosphere of the office over which Hassler had presided, Stratton said, with its sacred traditions concerning standards, its unsurpassed instrument shop, its world-known experts in the construction and comparison of standards, and especially in the most precise measurement of length and mass, that the boy Fischer, scarcely over 16, found himself when he entered the employ of Govern- ment in a minor capacity [about the year 18801. * * Scarcely 40 years had passed since the end of Hassler's services and the beginning of Fischer's. His first instructors were the direct disciples of Hassler and he knew and talked with those who had come in personal contact with the first superintendent.1 Fischer's reminiscences concerning the early historyof the Weights and Measures office, gathered from his association with the successors of Hassler, were never recorded, to Stratton's regret, and the only biography of Hassler, by Florian Cajori, professor of mathematics at the University of California, centers on his career in the Coast Survey gathered from his association with the successors of Hassler, were never recorded, to in the history of science in the Federal Government, is the principal source of the present sketch.2 1 Stratton, "Address Memorializing Louis Albert Fischer, 1864.—1921," 15th Annual Con.
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