In England, prior to the conquest, the yard measured, according to later investigations, 39.6 inches, but it was reduced by Henry I in 1101, to compare with the measurement of his own arm. In 1324, under Edward II, it was enacted that "the inch shall have length of three barley corns, round and dry, laid end to end; twelve inches shall make one foot, and three feet one yard." While this standard for measurement was the accepted one, scientists were at work on a plan to establish a standard for length that could be recovered if lost, and Huygens, a noted philosopher and scientist of his day, suggested that the pendulum, which beats according to its length, should be used to establish the units of measurement. In 1758 Parliament appointed a commission to investigate and compare the various standards with that furnished by the Royal Society. The commission caused a copy of this standard to be made, marked it "Standard Yard, 1758," and laid it before the House of Commons. In 1742, members of the Royal Society of England and the Royal Academy of Science of Paris agreed to exchange standards, and two bars 42 inches long, with three feet marked off upon them, were sent to Paris, and one of these was returned later with "Toise" marked upon it. In 1760 a yard bar was prepared by Mr. Bird, which was afterwards adopted as a standard, as we shall see later. In 1774 the Royal Society offered a reward of a hundred guineas for a method that would obtain an invariable standard, and Halton proposed a pendulum with a moving weight upon it, so that by counting the beats when the weight was in one position and again when in another, and then measuring the distance between the two positions, a distance could be defined that could at any time be duplicated. The Society paid 30 guineas for the suggestion, and later the work was taken up by J. Whitehurst with the result that the distance between the positions of the weight when vibrating 42 and 84 times a minute was 59.89358 inches. The method was not further developed. How the Length of the Meter was Established In 1790, Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun, suggested to the Constituent Assembly that the king should endeavor to have the king of England request his parliament to appoint a commission to work in unison with one to be appointed in France, the same to be composed of members of the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Science, respectively, to determine the length of a pendulum beating seconds of time. England did not respond to the invitation, and the French commission appointed considered first of all whether the pendulum beating seconds of time, the quadrant of the meridian, or the quadrant of the equator should be determined as a source of the standard. It was decided that the quadrant of the meridian should be adopted and that 0.0000001 of it should be the standard.