Rev. R. Sheepshanks constructed a working model as a standard and compared it with two Schuckburg's scales, the yard of the Royal Society, and two iron bars that had been used in the ordnance department. Having determined to his own satisfaction and that of his associates the value of the yard, he prepared the standard imperial yard, known as Bronze No. 1, a bronze bar 38 × 1 × 1 inch, with two gold plugs dropped into holes so that the surface of the plugs passes through the center plane of the bar. Upon these plugs are three transverse lines and two longitudinal lines, the yard being the distance from the middle transverse line--the portion lying between the two longitudinal ones--of one plug, to the corresponding line on the other plug. Forty copies were made, but two of these being correct at 62 degrees Fahrenheit, and these two, together with the original and one other, are kept in England as the standards for reference. In 1855 the standard as made by Rev. Sheepshanks was legalized. Attempts to Fix a Standard in the United States The Constitution empowers Congress to fix the standards of weights and measures, but up to 1866 no legal standard length had been adopted. In his first message to Congress Washington said: "A uniformity in the weights and measures of the country is among the important objects submitted to you by the Constitution, and if it can be derived from a standard at once invariable and universal, it must be no less honorable to the public council than conducive to the public convenience." In July, 1790, Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, sent a report to Congress containing two plans, both based on the length of the pendulum, in this case the pendulum to be a plain bar, the one plan to use the system then existing, referring it to the pendulum as the basis, and the other to take the pendulum and subdivide it, one-third of the pendulum to be called a foot. The whole length was that of one beating seconds of time. He made a table to read as follows: 10 Points make a Line. 10 Lines make a Foot. 10 Feet make a Decad. 10 Decads make a Rood. 10 Roods make a Furlong. 10 Furlongs make a Mile. Congress did not adopt his system, and as England was then working on the problem, it was decided to await the results of its labors. In 1816, Madison, in his inaugural address, brought the matter of standards to the attention of Congress, and a committee of the House made a report recommending the first plan of Jefferson, but the report was not acted upon. In 1821, J. Q. Adams, then Secretary of State, made a long and exhaustive report in which he favored the metric system, but still advised Congress to wait, and Congress--waited. What the Standards are in the United States