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The Measure Of All Things

Royal Society Prize for Science Books, 2003

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349115078

Price: £13.99

ON SALE: 3rd June 2004

Genre: Mathematics & Science

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THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS tells the story of how science, revolutionary politics, and the dream of a new economy converged to produce both the metric system and the first struggle over globalization.
Amidst the scientific fervor of the Revolution two French scientists, Delambre and Mechain, were sent out on an expedition to measure the shape of the world and thereby establish the metre (which was to be one ten-millionth the distance from pole to equator). Their hope was that people would use the globe as the basis of measure rather than an arbitrary system meted out by the monarchs. As one scientist went north along the French meridian and the other south, their experiences diverged just as radically. After seven years, they received a hero’s welcome upon their return to Paris. Mechain, however, was obsessed over a minute error in his calculations that he’d discovered and concealed, and which eventually drove him to his grave. His death forced his colleague Delambre to choose between loyalty to his friend and his science.

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Reviews

all the pace and plot of a historical adventure novel, as though Longitude had been crossed with A Tale of Two Cities, with a measure of Don Quixote thrown in
The Sunday TIMES
riveting account of the origins of the metric system... an eye-opener
The DAILY TELEGRAPH