Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World (original 2002; edition 2002)by Ken Alder
Work InformationThe Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World by Ken Alder (2002)
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This is the true story of two French scientists who triangulated their way up and down the meridian crossing France - during the French Revolution, no less - in order to determine a precise length for the meter. The author, in researching all of this, discovered that not only was there an error in their measurements - rather than being a set one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, the first meter was about 200 micrometers too short to meet that definition - but that they had known about it and covered it up. This should be a fascinating book, but to be honest, it was dry almost to the point of being unreadable. I kept having to go back and reread paragraphs over and over again. Finally, a few chapters in, I gave up. In 1792, the French Academy of Sciences appointed two respected scientists to survey a north-south meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, for the purpose of determining the size (and shape) of the earth. Why is this important? Because it would establish an international basis for the meter, foundation of the metric system. It was expected that the work would be finished in about a year, but the expeditions, led by Pierre Francois Andre Méchain and Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, which were carried out amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, outlasted both the Academy and the monarchy. Ken Alder has located the lost correspondence between these two, and has discovered the surprising fact that Méchain’s guilt over the possibility of a critical error in a measurement near the southern end of the meridian led him to agonizing self-doubt that brought him close to what we would call a nervous breakdown and almost prevented his completion of the project (about seven years later than first expected). In The Measure of All Things, Ken Alder describes the surprisingly difficult and adventurous process by which the length of the meter was determined. Savants or learned men of France decided that the best way to develop a universal standard of measurement was to base that measurement on the natural world. They selected one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole and tasked two savants with leading expeditions to measure part of that distance using triangulation (the rest of the distance would then be estimated based on their results). Their journey started while the French revolution was taking place and over the seven years of their travels they faced challenges including civil war, wars with other countries, mountainous terrain, and malaria. Read more here...
The Measure of All Things is one of the finest narrative histories I have ever read. It is beautifully written throughout, endlessly informative and meticulously documented. . . The result of this diligence, and Alder's brilliance as a writer, is a book which thrills at every level. It is at once a historical detective story, a marvellous demonstration of how science and its social context animate one another, a human drama of the highest order and a parable which proves that - as Protagoras put it 25 centuries ago - 'man is the measure of all things'.
References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (11)In June 1792, the erudite and cosmopolitan Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and the cautious and scrupulous Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain set out from Paris -- one north to Dunkirk, the other south to Barcelona to calculate the length of the meter. In the face of death threats from village revolutionary councils, superstitious peasants, and civil war, they had only their wits and their letters to each other for support. Their findings would be used to create what we now know as the metric system. Despite their painstaking and Herculean efforts, Mechain made a mistake in his calculations that he covered up. The guilty knowledge of his error drove him to the brink of madness, and in the end, he died in an attempt to correct himself. Only then was his mistake discovered. Delambre decided to seal all evidence of the error in a vault at the Paris Observatory. Two hundred year later, historian Ken Alder discovered the truth. With scintillating prose and wry wit, Alder uses these previously overlooked letters, diaries, and journals to bring to life a remarkable time when everything was open to question and the light of reason made every dream seem possible. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)526.1Natural sciences and mathematics Astronomy Mathematical geography; cartography, map making Theory and determination of Earth's figureLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
Other than the herculean effort it took to try and "measure" a portion of a meridian, it was the story of Méchain's struggles that helped me get a better understanding of the origin of the scientific concept of "precision". He couldn't understand why repeat measurements would yield different results and died thinking he had committed a serious scientific error that he was ashamed to reveal. ( )