The Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress contain several drafts of this Report and other documents in connection with it. Of these the more important are:

1. A document in another hand but headed by Jefferson: first form of the Report on Measures, weights, & coins. 27 pages, undated.

2. Jefferson’s holograph rough draft, 30 pages, written partly in double columns; this is followed by a page headed Notes from the Bishop of Autun’s proposition sur les poids et mesures.

3. Jefferson’s holograph fair copy, dated July 4, 1790, 21 pages.

4. Jefferson’s covering letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, dated from New York, July 4, 1790.

5. January 17, 1791. Notes in Jefferson’s hand headed The rival propositions, on units of measure, weight, and coins for report of this date to the U.S. Congress. 3 pages followed by a page headed Notes on the history of the Dollar. This is followed by the Report of the Committee, 5 pages, in another hand.

6. The Postscript, written by another hand, 3 pages, dated January 10, 1791.

7. Jefferson’s letter to the President of the Senate concerning the Postscript, dated from Philadelphia, January 17, 1791. The President of the Senate, pro tempore, was John Langdon of New Hampshire.: “ I have the honour to inclose you a Postscript to the Report on Measures, Weights & coins now before your house. this has been rendered necessary by a small arithmetical error detected in the estimate of the cubic foot proposed in that report. the head of Superficial measures is also therein somewhat more developed.

" Nothing is known, since the last session of Congress of any further proceedings in Europe on this subject . . .”

8. Jefferson’s letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, similarly worded, on the same day.

9. A printed copy of the Postscript, with the leaf of errata, with three pages of the text.

A month before the publication of the Report, on June 12, 1790, Jefferson wrote from New York to David Rittenhouse in Philadelphia: “ I know not what apology to make for the trouble I am about to give you. I am sure I must call your publick spirit in aid of your private friendship to me.

" You will see by the head of the inclosed report, that the house of representatives have instructed me to lay before them a plan for establishing uniform weights, measures & coins. five and twenty years ago I should have undertaken such a task with pleasure, because the sciences on which it rests were then familiar to my mind and the delight of it. but taken from them thro’ so great a length of time, and forced by circumstances into contemplations of a very different nature & much less pleasing, I have grown rusty in my former studies. to render me more unequal to the task, it comes on me in the moment when I am separated from all my books & papers, which had been left in Paris & Virginia: and this place yeilds fewer resources in the way of books than could have been imagined. thus situated, I have done what I could towards fulfilling the object of the house of representatives, and I think myself happy in having such a resource as your friendship & your learning to correct what I have prepared for them. the necessity I am under must be my apology. it is desireable for the public that the plan should be free from errors: it is desireable for me that they should be corrected privately by a friend, rather than before the world at large, by the unfeeling hand of criticism. do then, my dear Sir, read it over with all that attention of which you are so much the master, and correct with severity every thing you find in it which is not mathematically just. and while I ask your attention to every part of it, I will make some notes on particular things.--it was not till after I had got through the work that I was able to get a sight of Whitehurst’s on the same subject. m ( ^~ r) Madison pro- ”