Download PDF The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World
Obtain the interesting deal from this publication to check out. You will not obtain only the impression yet also experience to give up every circumstance. Get likewise the warranty of exactly how this book is used. You will be conveniently finding this soft documents of the book in the web link that we provide. Unlike the others, we always serve the very professional book from expert writers. As The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World, it will certainly give you symmetrical system of exactly how a publication should need.
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World
Download PDF The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World
Locate your brand-new experience by reading The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World, this publication will certainly provide you completed experience concerning this life. It may not constantly be on your own to obtain such experiences if you have not yet the money. To prepare the trips and activities, you can read this kind of book. Yeah, this is an extremely remarkable publication that will certainly offer numerous type of experiences.
Guide that exists to read in this time will be the The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World As we have offered and also offered, you could worry about the cover of this publication initially. Considering the cove will certainly make you feel interested or otherwise in this publication. But, many individuals have verified that this publication has actually been very interesting to read, also looking from just the book cover. The principle of making the cover and also exactly how the author offers the title are extremely outstanding.
Thus, this web site provides for you to cover your problem. We reveal you some referred publications The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World in all kinds as well as themes. From common author to the well-known one, they are all covered to supply in this site. This The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World is you're searched for publication; you simply should go to the link web page to display in this site and after that opt for downloading. It will not take often times to obtain one book The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World It will depend on your net connection. Merely purchase as well as download the soft documents of this publication The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World
And also the reasons that you ought to choose this advised book is that it's written by a preferred writer worldwide. You might not have the ability to get this book quickly; this is why we provide you here to relieve. Being simple to get the book to read really becomes the initial step to end up. Occasionally, you will certainly deal with problems in discovering the The Measure Of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey And Hidden Error That Transformed The World outside. Yet right here, you will not face that issue.
Review
The Boston Globe These are enthralling, fascinating, even mind-altering pages. Alder imbues the narrative with a tremulous, fever-soaked climax and a lengthy and satisfying denouement.The Philadelphia Inquirer One of those rare works that both rewrite history and capture the imagination.The New York Times Book Review Passes a central test of any popular work of history: it bathes the past in the light, life, and humanity of the eternal present.
Read more
About the Author
Ken Alder is a professor of history and Milton H. Wilson Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Measure of All Things, published to worldwide acclaim in fourteen languages. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Read more
Product details
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (October 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743216768
ISBN-13: 978-0743216760
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 1.1 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
54 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#123,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
To me, this was a fascinating and thought provoking work. It not only provides insight into the life and thought of the two historical figures but also provides vivid context and reflection on the meaning of what they did. A triumph of thorough research and excellent writing.
I greatly enjoyed this book. While there have been complaints about a lack of example calculations and discussion of details of how it was done, there is enough in here for someone familiar with this type of work to figure it out. And if you don't know this material, you may not want to be faced with the math (believe me)!The discussion on the repeating 'theodolite' was great, as were the trials and tribulations of triangulation. If you've ever measured angles on a mountain top, you'll know just what the author is getting at. A great achievement for an historian, who, we presume, may not have done this kind of work.There are two other really good parts of this book. The first is the discussion on the search for a 'universal' system of measurement. It places the metric system in a context, not as the be-all and end-all, but as a serious effort to solve a serious set of problems. The discussion of the 'error' is fascinating. This part hasn't changed in nature, just the current details.The second is the analysis of the personalities of the two central characters. Alder does bring them to life. Having worked in Antarctica for a year and seen people dealing with the stress of isolation, the story was very real to me: I almost knew those guys, albeit in different times and guises. And the stress was real: these guys ran the risks of close encounters with Madame Guillotine, wars, disease, politics, the works. This was quite apart from the normal risks of the job, such as falling off cliffs and towers, exposure, unhappy locals, etc. Thank heavens for GPS, a technology that is possible only because of the foundation work of geodesists like Mechain and Delambre.Enjoy this book, as a history of measurement and geodesy, a history of a major surveying achievement, and a vivid study of personalities under real stress.
Still reading this fascinating story of the metric system, particularly what was involved to produce the meter distance as the savants Delambre and Mechain worked to measure the part of the meridian arc from Dunkerque to Barcelona during the French revolution.
Tells story of how pioneer mathematicians went about measuring the earth.
Scholarly work showing the evolution of the SI system. I was only vaguely aware of how the meter was defined so this was quite interesting. Even more interesting was the effort of some to introduce decimal time with 10 day weeks, 100 minute hours with 100 seconds,etc, and that France actually used this system for several years. In the meantime, I marvel at the continued use of the British units in the US despite how ill equipped it is to do anything efficiently. Change is indeed very hard.
Great book about the development of the metric system which was adopted in France in the late 1700's. It is now implemented and used worldwide except in the USA and some other minor countries. Too bad Thomas Jefferson didn't see the light.
At the time of the French Revolution the first metric system was already 5000 year old.Let me explain. Ancient Sumeria used a system of measurement based on the length of a pendulum whose period was based on the rotation of the Earth relative to the sun. This period of 1/360 parts of a solar day could not be changed by King or commoner. This made it the first universal standard based on properties of the whole Earth. This standard, and its cousins which made use of the stars then the planet Venus to time the rotation of the earth could be easily be reproduced world wide and spread to China and Japan in the East and to Britain in the West. There is even some evidence that it spread to the new world well before the common era.Mr Alder has written a compelling saga of the attempt to measure the circumference of the Earth in French revolutionary times, He fails to mention that this measurement had been made before the construction of the Great Pyramid and had been refined in the first millennium BCE achieving an accuracy of better than 0.05 percent.While these facts may have not been known to the French Academy of Science at the time and were thus not central to the story they do indicate that the search for a Universal Standard of Measurement was an age old endeavor and that the earth itself was the measure of that standard.
Excelet book.
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World PDF
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World EPub
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World Doc
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World iBooks
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World rtf
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World Mobipocket
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World Kindle