correspondence University of Chicago called Carl Sagan, though at that time Austria was not Sagan breached security who needed a job. I gave Sagan the assign- obliged to do so. The act was amended last ment of mathematically modelling the year. Animal welfare is regulated at by revealing US work on expansion of an exploding gas/dust cloud provincial level, and all nine provinces a lunar bomb project rarifying into the space around the Moon. have animal welfare legislation. This was preliminary to attempts to calcu- The Animal Experiments Act empowers Sir — In his review of two biographies of late the visibility of such a cloud from Earth. the competent Federal Ministers to regulate Carl Sagan, by William Poundstone and by Sagan had difficulty with the problem and technical matters by ministerial ordinance. Keay Davidson (Nature 401, 857; 1999), consulted Kuiper several times before I Ordinances laying down specific rules (for Christopher Chyba deals extensively with brought in additional help. Sagan soon sug- example, covering research centres that “Davidson’s accusation that the young gested that he should try to see how a breed animals on their own premises) are Sagan wilfully and illegally revealed nuclear explosion might be used to detect currently under consultation. As soon as classified information…” and further organic molecules on the Moon. I agreed to they come into force, the last minor defi- states: “This is a serious and specific legal a brief effort in that direction. ciencies in transposing the Directive will allegation which Davidson does not Nine monthly progress reports, all clas- have been eliminated. substantiate”. sified as secret and including all of Sagan’s Wolf Frühauf The classified project involved, Project work, were issued by ARF to the Air Force Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, A119, entitled A Study of Lunar Research Special Weapons Center under Project A119 Minoritenplatz 5, A-1014 Vienna, Austria Flights (SECRET), was conducted at from May 1958 to January 1959. According Armour Research Foundation (ARF) while to Armour (now the Illinois Institute of I was manager of physics research. I was also Technology Research Institute) archives, leader of the project, so Sagan reported they were all destroyed after October 1987. How metrics could have directly to me. I, therefore, feel obliged to I did not know until the biographies extend the historical record beyond the were published that Sagan had sent an saved UK car industry Davidson biography by offering some addi- “unclassified” (by whom?) manuscript Sir — You recently featured a report, in the tional, first-hand comments. about his work on A119 to any unautho- “100 years ago” column, (Nature 404, 27; A119 was one of a series of projects con- rized person — let alone to five people, as 2000) on German iron manufacturing, ducted at ARF under my direction from Chyba remarks. Both ARF’s and Sagan’s written by the British consul in 1949 to 1962, all concerned with the global obligations under the A119 contract, as Amsterdam in 1900. He mentioned a environmental effects of nuclear explosions Sagan’s signed security agreement would uniform system of dimensions for articles and related phenomena. Some time before have clearly informed him, required Air of universal consumption, and a system of May 1958, we were asked by the US Air Force clearance of any such revelations. As metric screw threads being fixed by a Force to add a small, fast-track project to his boss at the time, I would have had to take committee of engineers’ associations. investigate the visibility and effects of a forward any such request, and Air Force Unless Britain joined the metric standard, hypothetical nuclear explosion on the permission would have been extremely the consul warned, “Germany and the Moon. I was told the Air Force was very unlikely in those long-ago, very tense times. continent generally will have a constantly interested in the possibility of a surprise In his review, Chyba argues that classi- increasing advantage over British demonstration explosion, with all its obvi- fied documents can contain unclassified manufacturers”. His words were prophetic ous implications for public relations and titles or subsections. Perhaps so, but that — 150 of the world’s 190 export markets the Cold War. misses the point. Fortunately for the future are now metric. Whether the project was motivated by a of lunar science, a one- or two-horse race to The engineers’ associations agreed on desire for the United States to impress the detonate a nuclear explosion never the Système International (SI) of metric world (and the Soviet Union in particular), occurred. But in my opinion Sagan threads at a special meeting, the Congress or by fear that the Soviet Union itself might breached security in March 1959 when he of Zurich, in October1898. This was to end try the stunt, I cannot say. It was empha- revealed the ARF’s classified projects on the confusion caused by different European sized, however, that the most sensitive “possible lunar nuclear detonations” in his countries using different systems on their aspect of the project was, as with many application for a Miller fellowship. railways, though they didn’t enter British other Department of Defense projects, its Leonard Reiffel consciousness until the Second World War, very existence. Hence it was given a separate Exelar Corporation, 602 Deming Place, Chicago, as BSI War Emergency Standard BS name and work on it was classified as secret. Illinois 60614, USA 1095:1943. The 1898 meeting also saw the Our task was to assess what gross visible and birth of ISO metric standards for engineer- other phenomena might be generated by ing, which entered the British standards the explosive release on the lunar surface of environment in 1966 through a book pub- a given number of kilotonnes of energy. Austria takes lab animal lished by the then Ministry of Technology. We were also asked to try to determine Meanwhile, metric screw threads, stan- what legitimate scientific data might be welfare seriously dard diameters, shaft/hole fits and machin- gathered from such an event: for example, Sir — In response to the News report ing tolerances for the engineering industry about lunar chemistry. The cost to science “Austria taken to court for inadequate laws had been internationalized during the of destroying the pristine lunar environ- on animal welfare” (Nature 403, 582; 1920s and 1930s by a body called ISA, ment did not seem of concern to our spon- 2000), I would like to explain the legal which was absorbed into ISO in 1946. The sors — but it certainly was to us, as I made situation. Animal experiments in Austria old SI metric thread with its undesirably clear at the time. are regulated on the federal level by the sharp fillet radius was modernized by In staffing A119, I realised that we need- Animal Experiments Act. Passed in 1989, application of the unified profile by ISO in ed expertise in planetary physics and asked well before Austria’s accession to the 1958 and standardized by all industrialized Gerard P. Kuiper to act as our consultant. European Union in 1995, this law was nations soon afterwards. That is why all Kuiper agreed, and in time suggested that I drawn up to conform with the Animal mechanical engineering assemblies made hire a graduate student from Yerkes/ Experiment Directive (86/609/EEC), even in mainland European factories since 1959 © 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 405 | 4 MAY 2000 | www.nature.com 13 correspondence use the same threads up to 80 mm diameter. ford, contains particle physicists sponsored basal rates in animals of different size and In order to assure the free circulation of by the Department of Energy, this had no from different taxonomic groups. engineering components and subassemblies direct bearing on the selection. It is NASA’s (Measurements should be made on mature in the European Common Market, the UK policy to select instruments for its missions animals in a post-absorptive state, non- government — led by Harold Wilson — through a peer-review process that evalu- reproductive, at thermoneutral ambient announced in May 1965 that British indus- ates first and foremost the proposed science temperatures, and without abnormal try would abandon the inch within ten and the proposed instrument’s ability to activity2.) For these reasons, Kleiber years and adopt ISO metric standards. The achieve that science. There are other fac- rejected the use of the two determinations first attempt to produce a British engine to tors, but these do not include the participa- for marine mammal BMR available to him metric standards was already in progress at tion of other partners, either foreign or when preparing his original paper. Leyland Motors with the Leyland 500 domestic, unless they can help the team Nevertheless, published BMR data for engine. However, this was marketed in con- achieve their science goals. marine mammals often have not tinental Europe only in the Leyland Nation- Incidentally, your News profile stated conformed to these criteria, but have been al bus, whose full metrication was never that the competing instrument was from included in comparative analyses with data completed: it incorporated four different NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center that do. This has led to the widely held screw-thread standards and was impossible (MSFC). Although MSFC did participate, view that marine mammals have higher to manage in European workshops. along with several other institutions, the BMRs and that they are therefore not British Leyland vehicles failed to attract principal investigator was from the Univer- ‘normal’ mammals. continental dealers because the inch was sity of Alabama in Huntsville, and the pro- In the analysis by Lavigne et al.2, where already alien in mainland Europe — it had posal was submitted through the university.