Close upon all this, that is to say, in June, 1834, came the celebrated reduction in the standards of our gold coin, one of the chief measures of the Jackson administration. This changed gold from a curiosity to a currency; bullion and foreign coin flowed to the mint, and accuracy of assay was more than ever needful. Mr. Eckfeldt was equal to the emergency, and resolutely introduced reforms, which, at first, made the older officers stand in doubt. In those days, about the time the new mint edifice on Chestnut street was finishing, Mr. Peale was sent to London and Paris to observe the methods of assaying and refining, and to procure a new apparatus. We were thus supplied with French beams, weights, and cupel furnaces, and with the appliances of Gay-Lussac’s humid assay, and the printed details of the process. Soon after, Mr. Saxton, famous for his skill in constructing balances and other delicate instruments, returned from a long schooling in that line in London, and was employed in the Mint. Thus furnished, Mr. Eckfeldt felt himself “set up,” and able to compete with the foreign assayers, and if he was ever more precise, it was because he disregarded certain allowances which had become a time-honored custom. A large importation of fine gold bars from France, known as the French Indemnity, and which came because President Jackson declared he “would submit to nothing that was wrong,” gave a fine opportunity for testing and comparing foreign assays; and it was generally found that these bars were somewhat below the alleged fineness. A still more important discovery, was the fact that British Sovereigns ran below their standard of fineness. This happened when he had been in office less than three years, and the Director was unwilling to set the finding of young Eckfeldt against the experience of Old England. The Assayer being assured and re-assured of the accuracy of his results, Director Moore consented to notify the British Government of their error. The result was a closer scrutiny in the London Mint, and a final acknowledgement that they were wrong. This was no less a triumph for Mr. Eckfeldt, than it was a contribution to exact science, and an honor to the American Government. It is not surprising, that he felt at first the inconvenience of passing from one form of nomenclature to another, though to a better one. A friend remarks, “I recall conversations with Mr. Eckfeldt, showing how seriously he felt the revolution. He would _think_ in carats, and _report_ in decimals. And I often recur to this as illustrating the kind of difficulties which would arise in case of a decimalising of weights and measures.”