3D Scanning for Advanced Manufacturing, Design, and Construction

Chapter 1 History of Metrology

The regulation of weights and measures is necessary for science, industry, health care, and commerce. The importance of establishing uniform national standards was demonstrated by the drafters of the US Constitution, who gave Congress in Article 1, Section 8, the power to fix the Standard of Weights and Measures. “Weights and Measures,” said John Quincy Adams in 1821, “may be ranked among the necessaries of life to every individual of human society.”¹

Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessaries of life, to every individual of human society. They enter into the economical arrangements and daily concerns of every family. They are necessary to every occupation of human industry; to the distribution and security of every species of property; to every transaction of trade and commerce; to the labours of the husbandman; to the ingenuity of the artificer; the studies of the philosopher; to the researches of the antiquarian; to the navigation of the mariner, and the marches of the soldier; to all the exchanges of peace, and all the operations of war. The knowledge of them, as in established use, is among the first elements of education, and is often learnt by those who learn nothing else, not even to read and write. This knowledge is riveted in the memory by the habitual application of it to the employments of men throughout life. (John Quincy Adams, Report to Congress, 1821)

1.1 INTRODUCTION

To understand 3D laser scanning technology, ...