From the moral thermometer to money: Metrological reform in pre-confederation Canada

The importance of infrastructural work for the mobility of practices and for the capacity of centres to act on distant sites is stressed in both science studies and the sociology of state formation. Employing Kula's typology of metrological systems, this paper examines four areas of metrological reform in pre-Confederation Canada, stressing the existence of metrological hybrids. Metrological standardization is held to depend upon the exercise of sovereign state power at the same time as it extends the administrative capacity of state agencies.