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

by Ken Alder

Book Overview

In June 1792, amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary journey. Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074321675X
• ISBN13: 9780743216753
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Best Meter Forward

This is a fascinating book! Ken Alder covers the birth of the metric system, but manages to work in a marvelous overview of measurement, history of science, philosophy, politics, and a front-row seat at the French Revolution. While the rationalists wanted a new unit of measurement based on the earth itself, politics in government and among the thinkers (savants) kept derailing the project. The survey of the Paris Meridian, expected to take a few months, ended up taking seven years due to war, plague, inflation, politics, fear, jealousy, rivalry, insular business practices, and despondency.Alder introduces us to the two men driving the survey, Delambre and Mechain, and describes all the problems preventing a quick measurement from Dunkirk to Barcelona. He covers the multitude of measurement units, different in each city or town, and even varying by profession, that led to the demand for standard measures. Yet this "rational" way meant uprooting existing social contracts, such as the "just price" of a product that reflected not only costs, but the relationships between customer and vendor, or lord and peasant. Fields were measured not by area but in how long it took to plow them or how many bushels of seed they required. Lords actually owned reference measurement units and received royalties when they were copied. Differing units kept outsiders from taking advantage of a town's economy. Delambra and Mechain's project would upset all this, and not everyone supporting the Revolution wanted to eliminate these old ways.This is a book not only about how we measure and why, not only about Delambre and Mechain's arduous and separate journeys through France, or the political fallout over adoption of the metric system, but also the change in philosophy that turned savants into scientists and forced them to deal with the concept of error. Mechain could not accept that his meticulous work was "wrong" so he suppressed his results, but this drove him to worse than distraction. Delambre only found out the truth upon Mechain's death, for the latter would not part with his raw data. And Alder achieves a coup in discovering Delambre's correspondence and notes on the whole matter, including the resultant meter that wasn't as accurate as advertised.Informative, wide-ranging, and evocative, a terrific addition to your science shelf.

A tough subject handled well

From page 1 I have really enjoyed reading The Measure of All Things. The story is put well and sympathetically. The weaving of the facts within the contemporary situation (the French were thoroughly enjoying their Revolution), the hardships, anxiety, fear of imprisonment for getting the numbers wrong etc etc just added to the pace and excitement.The book is nicely written, the style is light and airy. Just the thing for long journeys.I have critisisms, but these do not really detract from the enjoyment or value of the book as a work of history.Mr Alder might have consulted a geodetic surveyor and preferably one who knows the history of geodesy and is familiar with the instruments and techniques. The claim regarding the superb accuracy of the de Borda repeating circle versus Ramsden's theodolite was flawed - the circle suffered from systematic errors and it was this that led to its extinction in the 1830's in favour of the theodolite. Again, some expert advice would have removed the errors regarding the astro-geodesy such as the deviation of the vertical etc. My last complaint is the impression that the savants of the Academie Royal led the world in the science. Little mention is made of the science work the British contributed and the collaboration that existed between the scientists of both nations. On the other hand, this is a book about the metre so I suppose it's reasonable to give the French due credit!! These complaints are purely academic and, in my mind, do not detract one iota from what is an excellent piece of work. Well done, Mr Alder.If my next book is half as good as this, I shall be satified.Edwin Danson, author of Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America (another excellent book!!!)

The Basis of Measurement

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.

A very good science history book

When I first saw this book displayed in a bookstore,I thought, "Geez, why would anyone waste time in readinga whole book just about meter ?"After a month, I happened to watch the author's introductionof the book in CSPAN2 Book Review channel. I found thatthe book is not just the details about meteric system,but the real stories behind, and stories about the intelligentscientiests. The author is very eloquent, the book is not difficult to read even for the non-science majors.I am a engineering major, understanding science is not reallya problem. But too many science history booksexplain too much details which can be understood only by thepeople who major in the particular subject.This book is not. I hope that he writesother books, for example, about Newton, or other famousscientists.BTW, the author's introduction of the book in CSPAN2 Book ReviewChannel alone deserves a good attention. It was very nice,and I regret that I didn't record it.

The Dramatic Beginnings of the Metric System

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 triangulati