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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 make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator—a standard that would be used “for all people, for all time.”
The Measure of All Things is the astonishing tale of one of history’s greatest scientific adventures. Yet behind the public triumph of the metric system lies a secret error, one that is perpetuated in every subsequent definition of the meter. As acclaimed historian and novelist Ken Alder discovered through his research, there were only two people on the planet who knew the full extent of this error: Delambre and Méchain themselves.
By turns a science history, detective tale, and human drama, The Measure of All Things describes a quest that succeeded as it failed—and continues to enlighten and inspire to this day.
- Sales Rank: #231175 in eBooks
- Published on: 2014-07-29
- Released on: 2014-07-29
- Format: Kindle eBook
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The Boston Globe These are enthralling, fascinating, even mind-altering pages. Alder imbues the narrative with a tremulous, fever-soaked climax and a lengthy and satisfying denouement.
The Philadelphia Inquirer One of those rare works that both rewrite history and capture the imagination.
The New York Times Book Review Passes a central test of any popular work of history: it bathes the past in the light, life, and humanity of the eternal present.
Review
The Boston Globe These are enthralling, fascinating, even mind-altering pages. Alder imbues the narrative with a tremulous, fever-soaked climax and a lengthy and satisfying denouement.
The Philadelphia Inquirer One of those rare works that both rewrite history and capture the imagination.
The New York Times Book Review Passes a central test of any popular work of history: it bathes the past in the light, life, and humanity of the eternal present.
About the Author
Ken Alder is a professor of history and Milton H. Wilson Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Measure of All Things, published to worldwide acclaim in fourteen languages. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
A story about science and scientists
By Guillermo Maynez
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.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Best Meter Forward
By Maddi Hausmann
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.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
History, Science and Human Nature
By RV
The Measure of All Things tells the incredible story of the Metric System's origin. During the early days of the French revolution, two astronomers are sent on a mission to precisely measure a part of the meridian arc passing through France and Spain. The plan is to use these measurements to calculate the length of the Meter, which was then defined as one ten millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator. The book is exceptionally well researched and written, and Adler is not satisfied with simply relating dry historical facts to his readers. This book truly makes 18th century Europe come to life.
What I found fascinating about this book was not so much the story of the creation of a new measurement system, but the fact that this ambitious mission took place in an age of extreme political and societal turmoil. While this mission was in progress, governments in France changed several times, wars and battles were won and lost, and hyper inflation devastated the French economy.
My biggest complaint about this book, and it is a major one, is that I often felt that Adler was taking creative freedom with history - conjuring the thoughts and feelings of historical figures without basing his conjectures on any reliable source. I feel that this is not appropriate in a book about the history of science.
Bottom line: this is a very good book that I warmly recommend to anyone interested in history in general and in the history of science in particular. For those who enjoy the subject, I would also like to recommend "Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time" by Martin Gorst.
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