The Measure of All Things

Rating:
Summary: A quest for a perfection
Review: THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS is a delightfully written account of the quest by Delambre and Mechain, two astronomers who, in the midst of the French Revolution, attempt to use the latest technology (at that time) to triangulate various points along a meridian to find the perfect measurement, the meter. (One ten millionth the distance between the North Pole and the Equator) Along the way, they combat rapidly changing governments, ignorance and fear of the unknown, and most importantly (in Mechain's case), a crippling fear of error. The twists and turns of this enterprise are amazingly well-researched by Adler, and they are written in a style that is both informative and entertaining. Adler suggests that this quest led to nothing less than the transformation of how science was perceived by its practitioners; the change from the idea of savants (who believed in certain absolutes in science) to scientists (who were "engaged in a struggle to quantify their [scientists] uncertainty. ") The metric systems importance to France and the world at large is explained in political and economic terms that are easily digested by the reader, but at the heart of this book is the basic concept that how man deals with error; it can be his salvation or in the case of Mechain, his downfall. This is a wonderful examination of this momentous undertaking and well worth the time of anyone interested in man's constant efforts to utilize science for the improvement of the human condition.

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Summary: History, Science and Human Nature
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A great story of science and history
Review: The metric system of measurement is today used in every country except Myanmar, Libya and the United States. But have you ever stopped to think how long a metre is?

During the 18th Century, many French were aware of the inconsistencies that existed throughout the country when it came to measurement. For example, a pound of sugar in one town may be twice that found in the town down the road.

Therefore, the French Academy of Science decided that the new metric unit of measurement would be the metre and would be defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the Paris Meridian.

The measure of all things traces the journey of two scientists, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and Francois-Andre Méchain, who had to accurately measure the distance from Barcelona to Dunkirk. This simple task took six years to complete, and along the way a mistake 'slipped' into Méchain's calculations, which plagued Méchain until his death. Because Delambre later concealed this miscalculation, the metre is 0.02 per cent shorter than it should be!

This book is a fantastic read, with easy to understand science mixed with a dash of history. It's great to read a book that places science into context and allows the reader to understand how and why things happened the way they did.

The author, Ken Adler, has been interested in science since his early days at school, but in recent years he has been drawn to the history of science, in particular, during the French Revolution. "It was a time of Utopian renewal, the end of history and the rebuilding of the world. Many people at the time turned to nature and reason," says Ken.

"In the beginning, the French could have stated that this (some arbitrary length) was the metre. But it would not have been accepted. By basing it on nature it was a political coup. It was a grand gesture by the scientists, and had the aura of being exact."

According to Ken, the United States is slowly coming around to the metric system. "The USA had uniform measures (based on the English system) early on, so there wasn't the incentive to change, unlike in France. It takes a huge political push to change, which currently does not exist," says Ken. "But it is changing; even Coke in the States is going metric."

This review appeared in The Helix science magazine (October 2003).

Rating:
Summary: The Dramatic Beginnings of the Metric System
Review: 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