Stephen Mihm, associate professor, history, University of Georgia, will discuss weights, measures, and and nation making in the Early Republic.
The creation of uniform weights and measures was central to understandings of sovereignty and state formation in the United States from the revolutionary era onward. This paper examines the early efforts of the Continental Congress, the weights and measures clauses of the Constitution, and the contributions of Thomas Jefferson. It also analyzes John Quincy Adams’s famed report on weights and measures published in 1821. Throughout, it examines the ways that visions of a coherent nation state founded on standard weights and measures foundered in the early years of the United States.
For more information, visit the Department of History website.
