The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World (Paperback)

by Ken Alder (Author) "In June 1792-in the dying days of the French monarchy, as the world began to revolve around a new promise of Revolutionary equality-two astronomers set..." (more)
Key Phrases: meridian mission, provisional meter, definitive meter, Academy of Sciences, Fontana de Oro, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Alder delivers a triple whammy with this elegant history of technology, acute cultural chronicle and riveting intellectual adventure built around Delambre's and Mechain's famed meridian expedition of 1792-1799 to calculate the length of the meter. Disclosing for the first time details from the astronomers' personal correspondences (and supplementing his research with a bicycle tour of their route), Alder reveals how the exacting Mechain made a mistake in his calculations, which he covered up, and which tortured him until his death. Mechain, remarkably scrupulous even in his doctoring of the data, was driven in part by his conviction that the quest for precision and a universal measure would disclose the ordered world of 18th-century natural philosophy, not the eccentric, misshapen world the numbers suggested. Indeed, Alder has placed Delambre and Mechain squarely in the larger context of the Enlightenment's quest for perfection in nature and its startling discovery of a world "too irregular to serve as its own measure." Particularly fascinating is his treatment of the politics of 18th-century measurement, notably the challenge the savants of the period faced in imposing a standard of weights and measures in the complicated post-ancien regime climate. Alder convincingly argues that science and self-knowledge are matters of inference, and by extension prone to error. Delambre, a Skeptical Stoic, was the more pragmatic and, perhaps, the more modern of the two astronomers, settling as he did for honesty in error where precision was out of reach.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Most people don't think about how a mile became a mile or a foot a foot, but Alder here presents a fascinating account of how the meter the standard measure of distance for over 95 percent of the world's population became the meter. We live in an era when standard measures for objects and time have become so common that we would have difficulty imagining a world without them. Alder takes us back to revolutionary France, when it is estimated that 250,000 different units of weights and measures were in use. Written in the vein of Dava Sobel's Longitude and reading much like a historical thriller, his book follows the seven-year effort of two accomplished astronomers to measure the meridian and the curvature of the earth from Dunkirk to Barcelona. Imbued with the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment and the revolution's call for universal rights and truth, these scientists strove to create a truly universal standard. Alder's first book, Engineering the Revolution, won the 1998 Dexter Prize; his second is a fascinating and well-written work recommended for medium and large public libraries as well as academic libraries. James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743216768
• ISBN-13: 978-0743216760
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #480,071 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dramatic Beginnings of the Metric System, October 29, 2002

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Measure of All Things : The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World (Hardcover)

What do the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia have in common, as opposed to every other nation in the world? The answer is that they are the only nations not to have embraced the metric system. Inevitably, they will; their scientists all use it, and cars are made by it, and trading with other nations requires it. The inevitability of victory of the metric system is something Napoleon himself recognized: "Conquests will come and go," he declared, "but this work will endure." The work he spoke of was the defining of the meter, and it was a task begun in the final days of the French monarchy. In 1792, two French astronomers set out separately on the quest to make an accurate measurement of the globe, a measurement that would enable people to use the constant of the size of the globe as the foundation for rational weights and measures. Their plan was to measure enough of the distance of a north-south meridian through Paris that they would then be able to calculate the distance from the equator to the north pole, and one ten-millionth of that natural distance would be the meter. They aimed for unprecedented precision, and they got it, but they didn't get it exactly, for fascinating reasons all wonderfully told in _The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World_ (The Free Press) by Ken Alder.

It seems a simple task; a line of longitude from Dunkirk south to Barcelona would be mapped and calculated by triangulating high points, like mountains and steeples, along the line. In practice, it was devilishly, maddeningly, and lethally difficult. Weather, disease, the ravages of time, superstition, politics, and war all conspired to make the work of a few months stretch into years. The astronomer Delambre, heading north, was mistaken for an aristocrat, detained, and suspected of using a church tower as a royalist beacon. His partner Méchain, who took the southern route, had similar problems, and worse ones, as war with Spain erupted while he was in Spain. He had a fiendish obsession with exactitude, and made measurements of Barcelona's latitude by reckoning from the stars. Unfortunately, they were wrong due to refraction from the atmosphere, and Méchain knew they were wrong, but couldn't get them right. The knowledge of the error tortured him for the rest of his life. Méchain's error is not the error referred to in the book's subtitle. All the triangulation work had shown that the critics had been right from before the beginning, for the work could not produce a perfectly precise meter; the world was too irregular for that. The astronomers' work had produced, however, documentation of the more interesting fact of Earthly irregularity.

This story could not have been presented in a more dramatic and entertaining manner. An epic about the foundation of the metric system might seem to be impossible, but Alder has made the personalities interesting. He has also made clear the process of triangulation, the equipment required, and the scientific philosophy of what an error actually is. He has well described the history of the period, and the failures of the French Revolution, such as the calendar containing twelve months of three ten-day weeks each, or the clock with ten one-hundred minute hours in a day. Beside the origin of the admirable metric system of weights and measures, Alder has also given a brief history of how the world has adopted the system, which Americans ought to know about, since, with reluctance, we are having to use it more and more

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Basis of Measurement, December 30, 2002

By	Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Measure of All Things : The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World (Hardcover)

This is another book in the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude--taking a relatively unknown but important event in scientific history and describing the drama of discovery. In this case, Ken Alder has decided to tell the story of Mechain and Delambre, two "savants" who were charged with determining the length of the meter. Originally, the meter was defined to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator. So Mechain and Delambre set out to measure the length of the meridian more accurately than had ever been done before.

Like the best books about science, The Measure of All Things shows the nature of real science. First, that science is performed by real people like Mechain and Delambre with their own strengths and foibles; it does not just appear miraculously in textbooks. Second, the development of science is influenced by the history of the time such as the revolutionary period in France through which most of this story takes place.

But because this book is describing the determination of the meter--the basis of the scientific measurement system--it shows other important aspects of science that are often forgotten. For example, the important idea that how we measure things is ultimately completely arbitrary. Despite our natural desire to find the "absolute" meter, there is no such thing as Mechain and Delambre discover. We can choose the length of the meter to be whatever we want as long as--and here's the difficult part--we get everyone to agree. The problems of getting the meter accepted, even in France where it was developed, is a fascinating part of this book.

The cover of my edition of this book touts the "hidden error that transformed the world." This is a bit of marketing strategy to entice those, I think, who like to read about other's mistakes. But, as a scientist, I see this notation of error as being a part of what science is. Modern science understands that measurement is never error-free but this was not always understood and bothered scientists like Mechain. It is very worthwhile for non-scientists to see how scientists learned to deal with the fact that there are always limitations to their measurements.

Anyone interested in the importance of measurement in science would be amiss is passing this book by. Alder has provided a readable account of the development of the basis of our modern, nearly-universal method of measurement. It is definitely worth a read.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A story about science and scientists, February 21, 2005

By	Guillermo Maynez (Mexico, Distrito Federal Mexico) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book follows a recent trend, which has produced some very good books, to take a relevant but poorly known scientific development and telling its story and the story of its main protagonists. Alder has chosen the story of how, in the late XVIII Century, the Royal Academy of Sciences in France was trying hard to reach the definitive measurement of the meter, and hence of all the metric system, the one which today dominates weights and measures around the world. The meter was supposed to be a ten millionth of the distance from one of the poles to the equator. The French proposed taking a sample of one meridian, the segment running from Dunkirk down to Barcelona, measuring it to perfection and then inferring the rest of the distance of the meridian. One ten millionth of that would be the meter. Two outstanding astronomers are chosen for the job, which was supposed to last no more than a year. But alas, the French Revolution comes to full gear at the beginning of the labors, and our scientists suffer all kinds of setbacks, prolonging the task for seven long and hard years.

Who were these gentlemen? Well, here is where the story gets all its fascinating features, illuminating the reader about how much the personalities involved in research can affect the scientific outcome of it. The first man is Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre. He is a man of humble origins, a Classicist who has become tutor to a noble and rich family. A late bloomer, Delambre has become a remarkable astronomer almost all by himself, as a disciple of renowned (a magnificent and eccentric character) Jerome Lalande. The other man is a professional astronomer, also a disicple of Lalande's. His name is Pierre Francois Andre Mechain, who lives in the Royal Observatory in Paris.

Delambre goes north of Paris to Dunkirk while Mechain goes south to Barcelona. In the early days of their quest, political events (the execution of King Louis XVI and the instauration of the Terror) impose severe setbacks to both scientists. So severe, that the original year of labor will stretch to seven years. This is where the book reaches high altitudes, when it describes the differences in personalities between Delambre and Mechain. Granted, Mechain suffers much more, including a terrible accident and exile in Italy. But while Delambre is patient, practical and business-going, Mechain starts developing a severe anguish, emotional imbalance and paranoia. All this is aggravated by a mysterious situation, which really becomes the axis of the story: while measuring up the latitude at Montjuich, south of Barcelona, Mechain seems to make a mistake which will torment him for the rest of his life. One of the meditions (each one related to a different star) simply doesn't fit with the rest. Delambre or any other practical astronomer would simply have dismissed the incongrous data as a mysterious distortion, but Mechain, a man obsessed with an accuracy impossible for his age, decides not to disclose the mistake, fearing it might destroy his reputation. And so, year after year, he carries along his guilt and his paranoia.

Somehow, the book has a happy ending I will not spoil here. Suffice it to say this a very interesting and well written story about a true and relevant scientific quest. Don't get bogged down in scientific detail if you don't get everyting right. The adventure and the human story are more than satisfactory enough.