Linked Data Explorerhttp://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1151684928
The measure of all things the seven-year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world
Tells the story of astronomers Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre-Francois Mechain, who set out in 1792 to measure the section of meridian arc from Dunkerque to Barcelona to establish the meter as the common standard of measure, and discusses the error made by Mechain that has been perpetuated through the centuries.
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- http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151684928#Topic/biography_&_autobiography_science_&_technology
- http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151684928#Topic/bcd
- http://id.worldcat.org/fast/812840
- http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85084371
- http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85006477
- http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151684928#Topic/metric_system_history_bcd
- http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1018541
- http://worldcat.org/entity/person/id/2637889709
- http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151684928#Topic/technology_&_engineering_cartography
- http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151684928#Topic/science_earth_sciences_geography
- http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151684928#Topic/geodesy_history_bcd
- http://worldcat.org/entity/person/id/2642858471
http://schema.org/description
- "Tells the story of astronomers Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre-Francois Mechain, who set out in 1792 to measure the section of meridian arc from Dunkerque to Barcelona to establish the meter as the common standard of measure, and discusses the error made by Mechain that has been perpetuated through the centuries."@en
- "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. [This book] is the ... story of [this] scientific quest, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter for all nations and for all times. Yet when [the author] located the long-lost correspondence between the two men, along with their mission logbooks, he stumbled upon a two-hundred-year-old secret ... 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? ... The measurements brought back by Delambre and Mechain not only made science into a global enterprise and made possible our global economy, but also revolutionized our understanding of error. Where Mechain conceived of error as a personal failure, his successors learned to tame it. This, then is a story of two men, a secret, and a timeless human dilemma: is it permissible to perpetuate a small lie in the service of a larger truth? -Dust jacket."
http://schema.org/genre
- "Downloadable audio books"
- "History"
- "History"@en
- "Audiobooks"
http://schema.org/name
- "The measure of all things the seven-year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world"
- "The measure of all things the seven-year odyssey and hidden error that transformed the world"@en