Weights and Measures
He made a careful study of the contemporary state of weights and measures before proposing reform in the British House of Commons on 5 February 1790. In France, Charles Maurice Talleyrand was pursuing similar goals with a unit of length based on the seconds pendulum, as was Thomas Jefferson in the U.S. having been charged by President George Washington with measurement reform. Talleyrand had ambitions that France would establish itself at the centre of a new international measurement system that would form the basis of global trade and, on hearing of Riggs-Miller's initiative, proposed a tripartite collaboration. After some diplomatic manoeuvring by Talleyrand, the definitive pendulum measurement was agreed to take place in France. However, France's official approach for collaboration was then rejected by Foreign Secretary the Duke of Leeds. Riggs-Miller continued to campaign on the matter but, when parliament was dissolved in 1790, he was not reelected. Ultimately, in 1791, the French National Assembly vetoed the pendulum in favour of the meridional definition of the metre, bringing an effective end to hopes of collaboration. France unilaterally adopted the metric system in 1793.
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