Technikatörténeti szemle 10. (1978)

A MÉRÉS ÉS A MÉRTÉKEK AZ EMBER MŰVELŐDÉSÉBEN című konferencián Budapesten, 1976. április 27–30-án elhangzott előadások II. - Rotter, F.: A hitelesítő szolgálat fejlődése Ausztriában az elmúlt 200 évben

regulated by the Allgemeines Zimentierungs-Patent (General Weights and Measures Act) of the year 1777. The foresaid Zimentierungspatent is, even regarded from the point of view of the 20th century, a surprisingly modern law. It treated all matters that are nowadays considered as Legal Metrology. Everybody who bought or sold or calculated wages according to weights and measures, was obliged to use verified measuring instruments. The measuring instruments had to be re-verified every second year. For butchers and other tradesmen, and in the city of Vienna, this period was even one year only. Moreover innkeepers had to use verified liquid measures and in forestry verified Klafter bars were obligatory. Measuring instruments were not only liable to verification when they were just used, but also when they were „kept in possession for use at the business premises", the merchant then had to deliver proof that this is not the case. Also the imperial offices and cashes were obliged to use verified measuring instruments. In the following years we may observe a decline of legal metrology. The sovereign's weights and measures offices were liquidated, and their activities were transferred to the local authorities. It also was not possible to extend the validity of Viennese measures and of the Zimentierungspatent to the whole of Austria. When the metric system was created in France in the period between 1792 and 1799, it found many partisans in Austria too. The first in Austria to support the metric system was the mathematician, geodecist and arms technician lieutenant-colonel Georg Freiherr von VEGA. VEGA is the author of the famous logarithmic tables in seven figures which bear his name and have appeared in 1797 for the first time. VEGA was only 48 years of age, when he became the victim of murder with robbery in 1802 at Nussdorf near Vienna. It was in 1811 when his murderer was discovered, because he possessed a protractor on which VEGA's name was engraved; he was executed at the ,,Spinnerin am Kreuz", a monument in the south of Vienna. In 1803 from VEGA's legacy his book „Natural System of Measures, Weights and Currency" was published, where he confesses his sympathy for the metric system of measurement and in which he refers to the mathematician LAPLACE. During the time of the Napoleonic Wars the metric system became known in great parts of Austria. This applies to the Tyrol, to Illyria, Dalmatia, Lombardy and Venetia. At first there existed the plan to maintain the metric system of measures where it was already in use, and to introduce it finally in the remaining countries of Austria. Already in 1816 a commission has been established for this purpose. In 1824 the Chancery of the court applied for the introduction of the metric system in the Lombardy, in Venetia and possibly in other provinces. A new commission was then founded consisting of many prominent scientists, e.g. PRECHTL, the director of the Polytechnic Institute, v. LITTROW, the director of the University Observatory, university professor Freiherr von ETTINGSHAUSEN, just to mention a few names. This commission issued in 1825 an expert evidence against the metric measuring system. Nevertheless the studies were taken up again in 1831 by the university professor of physics Frh. v. BAUMGARTNER, and