The measure of all things
Subtitle: the seven-year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world
By: Ken Alder.
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 422
Subjects: History: World; Metric System; Geodetic Surveying; France - History - Revolution And Napoleonic Empire (1789-1815); World - General; Science; Meter (Unit); Measurement; History; History / World; Delambre, J. B. J; Earth Sciences - Geography; Europe - France; (Jean Baptiste Joseph),; Arc measures
First sentence: 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 out in opposite directions on an extraordinary quest.
Description: "Amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions from Paris to measure the world, one voyaging north to Dunkirk, the other south to Barcelona. Their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator, a standard that has since swept the planet.

The Measure of All Things is the astonishing story of one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter for all nations and for all time.".

"Yet when Ken Alder located the long-lost correspondence between the two men, along with their mission log books, he stumbled upon a two-hundred-year-old secret, and a drama worthy of the great French playwrights. The meter, it turns out, is in error. One of the two astronomers, Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain, made contradictory measurements from Barcelona and, in a panic, covered up the discrepancy. The guilty knowledge of his misdeed drove him to the brink of madness, and ultimately to his death.

Only then - after the meter had already been publicly announced - did his partner, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre, discover the truth and face a fateful choice: what matters more, the truth or the appearance of the truth?"--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 397-400) and index.