Krishna
In fact, the full name of the book is ‘Measure of All Things: The Seven Year Odyssey and the Hidden Error that Transformed the World’!
It is a non fiction work and if you are interested in science, this book will keep you interested. This is the story of the French effort to invent a measure that can be used all over the world, based on nature, one that is constant and never changes. This is the story of the Meter (The Metric system really).
The French monarch commissions two savants, Delambre and Mechain, to ‘take the measure of quarter of a longitude, from pole to pole’, and a millionth of the distance is to be the new standard to be named the metre. This would also then define a standard gram for weight. This was to revolutionize France, which had a multitude of measures in every province, and sometimes, confusingly, the same name for different measures. This new system, deviced by savants was to be impartial, and give gain or loss to no one, and thus be fair to all.
The story is told in a wonderful tone, with a student’s avid curiosity, and Ken Alder seems to be really enjoying narrating the story as it unfolds. The enthusiasm is catching, and the story is indeed interesting, because of the French history that unfolds in parallel – The French Revolution, the counter revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, to cite a few instances. Also, the difficulties in measuring a large area (France and Spain) and extrapolating it to the rest of the world, the error that Mechain finds but cannot explain, the inability to correct the mistake by measuring again (Spain having reconquered the area and being hostile to the ‘Godless Republicans’ and in war with France). The hostility and even arrest of savants (scientists) by the revolutionary government because of their sympathy with the monarchy, the series of deaths that took many prominent savants, all of it comes across well.
The story drags a bit with Mechains self doubts occupying an inordinately large portion of the story but surprises abound. The fact that the diversity of the measures helped traders make their margins, and the fact that they fudged the dimensions rather than increase the cost (eg of a loaf of bread) when the input costs went up make for fascinating reading.
It is indeed worth a read if you are interested in that sort of stuff, and for just the wonderful way in which a possibly serious and potentially tedious subject has been narrated in itself will warrant a 6/10 for this book.
— Krishna