The Measure of All Things

The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World

by Ken Alder

2002 422 pages eng

In June 1792, the erudite and cosmopolitan Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and the cautious and scrupulous Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain set out from Paris -- one north to Dunkirk, the other south to Barcelona to calculate the length of the meter. In the face of death threats from village revolutionar…