Rayleigh and the establishment of electrical standards

Lord Rayleigh (1842-1919) enjoyed a remarkable reputation as the doyen of precision measurement in physical sciences in late Victorian Britain. Before his celebrated work on the rare gases, he has already managed a campaign to set up universally accepted standards of electrical resistance, a task of decisive importance both in electromagnetic theory and in cable telegraphy. This paper examines the organization of this campaign and how it affected the meaning of precision and of collaboration within the European physics workforce a century ago. Management and negotiation were important factors in the success of these late Victorian scientific projects.