Measurements and Metrology

1. METROLOGY

Not so very long ago, the scholar was often content with qualitative observations. Many phenomena were studied without much trouble being taken to obtain actual measurements. But it is now becoming more and more understood that to establish the relations which exist between physical magnitudes, and to represent the variations of these magnitudes by functions which allow us to use the power of mathematical analysis, it is most necessary to express each magnitude by a definite number.

Under these conditions alone can a magnitude be considered as effectively known. “I often say,” Lord Kelvin has said, “that if you can measure that of which you are speaking and express it by a number you know something of your subject; but if you cannot measure it nor express it by a number, your knowledge is of a sorry kind and hardly satisfactory. It may be the beginning of the acquaintance, but you are hardly, in your thoughts, advanced towards science, whatever the subject may be.”

It has now become possible to measure exactly the elements which enter into nearly all physical phenomena, and these measurements are taken with ever increasing precision. Every time a chapter in science progresses, science shows itself more exacting; it perfects its means of investigation, it demands more and more exactitude, and one of the most striking features of modern physics is this constant care for strictness and clearness in experimentation.

A veritable science of measurement has thus been constituted which extends over all parts of the domain of physics. This science has its rules and its methods; it points out the best processes of calculation, and teaches the method of correctly estimating errors and taking account of them. It has perfected the processes of experiment, co-ordinated a large number of results, and made possible the unification of standards. It is thanks to it that the system of measurements unanimously adopted by physicists has been formed.

At the present day we designate more peculiarly by the name of metrology that part of the science of measurements which devotes itself specially to the determining of the prototypes representing the fundamental units of dimension and mass, and of the standards of the first order which are derived from them. If all measurable quantities, as was long thought possible, could be reduced to the magnitudes of mechanics, metrology would thus be occupied with the essential elements entering into all phenomena, and might legitimately claim the highest rank in science. But even when we suppose that some magnitudes can never be connected with mass, length, and time, it still holds a preponderating place, and its progress finds an echo throughout the whole domain of the natural sciences. It is therefore well, in order to give an account of the general progress of physics, to examine at the outset the improvements which have been effected in these fundamental measurements, and to see what precision these improvements have allowed us to attain.

§ 2. THE MEASURE OF LENGTH

To measure a length is to compare it with another length taken as unity. Measurement is therefore a relative operation, and can only enable us to know ratios. Did both the length to be measured and the unit chosen happen to vary simultaneously and in the same degree, we should perceive no change. Moreover, the unit being, by definition, the term of comparison, and not being itself comparable with anything, we have theoretically no means of ascertaining whether its length varies.

If, however, we were to note that, suddenly and in the same proportions, the distance between two points on this earth had increased, that all the planets had moved further from each other, that all objects around us had become larger, that we ourselves had become taller, and that the distance travelled by light in the duration of a vibration had become greater, we should not hesitate to think ourselves the victims of an illusion, that in reality all these distances had remained fixed, and that all these appearances were due to a shortening of the rule which we had used as the standard for measuring the lengths.

From the mathematical point of view, it may be considered that the two hypotheses are equivalent; all has lengthened around us, or else our standard has become less. But it is no simple question of convenience and simplicity which leads us to reject the one supposition and to accept the other; it is right in this case to listen to the voice of common sense, and those physicists who have an instinctive trust in the notion of an absolute length are perhaps not wrong. It is only by choosing our unit from those which at all times have seemed to all men the most invariable, that we are able in our experiments to note that the same causes acting under identical conditions always produce the same effects. The idea of absolute length is derived from the principle of causality; and our choice is forced upon us by the necessity of obeying this principle, which we cannot reject without declaring by that very act all science to be impossible.

Similar remarks might be made with regard to the notions of absolute time and absolute movement. They have been put in evidence and set forth very forcibly by a learned and profound mathematician, M. Painlevé.

On the particularly clear example of the measure of length, it is interesting to follow the evolution of the methods employed, and to run through the history of the progress in precision from the time that we have possessed authentic documents relating to this question. This history has been written in a masterly way by one of the physicists who have in our days done the most by their personal labours to add to it glorious pages. M. Benoit, the learned Director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, has furnished in various reports very complete details on the subject, from which I here borrow the most interesting.

We know that in France the fundamental standard for measures of length was for a long time the Toise du Châtelet, a kind of callipers formed of a bar of iron which in 1668 was embedded in the outside wall of the Châtelet, at the foot of the staircase. This bar had at its extremities two projections with square faces, and all the toises of commerce had to fit exactly between them. Such a standard, roughly constructed, and exposed to all the injuries of weather and time, offered very slight guarantees either as to the permanence or the correctness of its copies. Nothing, perhaps, can better convey an idea of the importance of the modifications made in the methods of experimental physics than the easy comparison between so rudimentary a process and the actual measurements effected at the present time.

The Toise du Châtelet, notwithstanding its evident faults, was employed for nearly a hundred years; in 1766 it was replaced by the Toise du Pérou, so called because it had served for the measurements of the terrestrial arc effected in Peru from 1735 to 1739 by Bouguer, La Condamine, and Godin. At that time, according to the comparisons made between this new toise and the Toise du Nord, which had also been used for the measurement of an arc of the meridian, an error of the tenth part of a millimetre in measuring lengths of the order of a metre was considered quite unimportant. At the end of the eighteenth century, Delambre, in his work Sur la Base du Système métrique décimal, clearly gives us to understand that magnitudes of the order of the hundredth of a millimetre appear to him incapable of observation, even in scientific researches of the highest precision. At the present date the International Bureau of Weights and Measures guarantees, in the determination of a standard of length compared with the metre, an approximation of two or three ten-thousandths of a millimetre, and even a little more under certain circumstances.

This very remarkable progress is due to the improvements in the method of comparison on the one hand, and in the manufacture of the standard on the other. M. Benoit rightly points out that a kind of competition has been set up between the standard destined to represent the unit with its subdivisions and multiples and the instrument charged with observing it, comparable, up to a certain point, with that which in another order of ideas goes on between the gun and the armour-plate.

The measuring instrument of to-day is an instrument of comparison constructed with meticulous care, which enables us to do away with causes of error formerly ignored, to eliminate the action of external phenomena, and to withdraw the experiment from the influence of even the personality of the observer. This standard is no longer, as formerly, a flat rule, weak and fragile, but a rigid bar, incapable of deformation, in which the material is utilised in the best conditions of resistance. For a standard with ends has been substituted a standard with marks, which permits much more precise definition and can be employed in optical processes of observation alone; that is, in processes which can produce in it no deformation and no alteration. Moreover, the marks are traced on the plane of the neutral fibres[2] exposed, and the invariability of their distance apart is thus assured, even when a change is made in the way the rule is supported.

It may happen, however, that we shall be brought one of these days to a new conception of the measure of length, and that very different processes of determination will be thought of. If we took as unit, for instance, the distance covered by a given radiation during a vibration, the optical processes would at once admit of much greater precision.

Fizeau was the first to have this idea:

But in the present state of things, since the legal and customary definition of the unit remains a material standard, it is not enough to measure length in terms of wave-lengths, and we must also know the value of these wave-lengths in terms of the standard prototype of the metre.

This was determined in 1894 by M. Michelson and M. Benoit in a classic experiment.

They measured a standard length of 10 centimetres, first in terms of the wave-lengths of the red, green, and blue radiations of cadmium, and then in terms of the standard metre.

The great difficulty of the experiment proceeds from the vast difference which exists between the lengths to be compared, the wave-lengths barely amounting to half a micron; [3] the process employed consisted in noting, instead of this length, a length easily made about a thousand times greater, namely, the distance between the fringes of interference.

In all measurement, that is to say in every determination of the relation of a magnitude to the unit, there has to be determined on the one hand the whole, and on the other the fractional part of this ratio, and naturally the most delicate determination is generally that of this fractional part. In optical processes the difficulty is reversed.

The fractional part is easily known, while it is the high figure of the number representing the whole which becomes a very serious obstacle.

It is this obstacle which MM. Michelson and Benoit overcame with admirable ingenuity. By making use of a somewhat similar idea, M. Macé de Lépinay and MM. Perot and Fabry, have lately effected by optical methods, measurements of the greatest precision, and no doubt further progress may still be made. A day may perhaps come when a material standard will be given up, and it may perhaps even be recognised that such a standard in time changes its length by molecular strain, and by wear and tear: and it will be further noted that, in accordance with certain theories which will be noticed later on, it is not invariable when its orientation is changed.

For the moment, however, the need of any change in the definition of the unit is in no way felt; we must, on the contrary, hope that the use of the unit adopted by the physicists of the whole world will spread more and more. It is right to remark that a few errors still occur with regard to this unit, and that these errors have been facilitated by incoherent legislation.

France was the admirable initiator of the metrical system. But it has for too long allowed a very regrettable confusion to exist; and it cannot be noted without a certain sadness that it was not until the 11th July 1903 that a law was promulgated re-establishing the agreement between the legal and the scientific definition of the metre.

Perhaps it may not be useless to briefly indicate here the reasons of the disagreement which had taken place. Two definitions of the metre can be, and in fact were given.

One had for its basis the dimensions of the earth, the other the length of the material standard. In the minds of the founders of the metrical system, the first of these was the true definition of the unit of length, the second merely a simple representation. It was admitted, however, that this representation had been constructed in a manner perfect enough for it to be nearly impossible to perceive any difference between the unit and its representation, and for the practical identity of the two definitions to be thus assured. The creators of the metrical system were persuaded that the measurements of the meridian effected in their day could never be surpassed in precision; and on the other hand, by borrowing from nature a definite basis, they thought to take from the definition of the unit some of its arbitrary character, and to ensure the means of again finding the same unit if by any accident the standard became altered. Their confidence in the value of the processes they had seen employed was exaggerated, and their mistrust of the future unjustified. This example shows how imprudent it is to endeavour to fix limits to progress. It is an error to think the march of science can be stayed; and in reality it is now known that the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the terrestrial meridian is longer than the metre by 0.187 millimetres. But contemporary physicists do not fall into the same error as their forerunners, and they regard the present result as merely provisional. They guess, in fact, that new improvements will be effected in the art of measurement; they know that geodesical processes, though much improved in our days, have still much to do to attain the precision displayed in the construction and determination of standards of the first order; and consequently they do not propose to keep the ancient definition, which would lead to having for unit a magnitude possessing the grave defect from a practical point of view of being constantly variable.

We may even consider that, looked at theoretically, its permanence would not be assured. Nothing, in fact, proves that sensible variations may not in time be produced in the value of an arc of the meridian, and serious difficulties may arise regarding the probable inequality of the various meridians.

For all these reasons, the idea of finding a natural unit has been gradually abandoned, and we have become resigned to accepting as a fundamental unit an arbitrary and conventional length having a material representation recognised by universal consent; and it was this unit which was consecrated by the following law of the 11th July 1903:—

“The standard prototype of the metrical system is the international metre, which has been sanctioned by the General Conference on Weights and Measures.”