With compulsory metrication back in the news with the UKMA's call for a massive programme of enforcement with criminal penalties, I thought it would be timely to reproduce Christopher Booker's review - on 7 September 2002 - of 'The Measure of all Things', by Ken Alder.

Here it is in full:

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"This riveting account of the origins of the metric system by Ken Alder, an American academic, is an eye-opener.

"Alder saw how, far from being a mere by-product of the French Revolution, the idea of a new, perfectly rational system of weights and measures lay at its very heart.

"In 1792, as they abolished religion and prepared to execute their King, the leading revolutionary minds conceived a breathtaking Utopian vison. To break the sentimental attachment of the French people to all the superstition and muddle of the past, their daily lives must be given an entirely new framework to replace the old dating system. Starting on the day France became a republic: a 10-day week, a 10-hour day, with each hour divided into 100 minutes; a new decimal currency.

"But at the centre of this brave new world would be a new system of measurement. All weights and measures must now be determined by their relationship to its central revolutionary idea, the metre, which linked the revolution to the globe itself, as it represented one ten-millionth of a line between the North Pole and the Equator (this was chosen because the result would be almost equivalent to the 'aune', which, like the British yard, was based on the length of a pace).

"Much of Alder's book is taken up with the astonishing story of how two leading French astronomer-savants, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre and Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain, set out from Paris, while revolutionary chaos was at its height, to spend seven years measuring that section of the meridian line which lay north from Paris to Dunkirk and south to Barcelona.

"Their adventures - they moved at a snail's pace, 'triangulating' every inch of their route - alternate between high farce and laborious measuring and re-measuring - ending in the horrified discovery by Mechain that his sums didn't add up.

"In the grip of a nervous breakdown, he then set out to falsify findings, with the result that when Paris gathered in 1799 to watch the unveiling of the platinum bar, which fixed the length of the metre for all time, it was a fraction of a millimetre short of what it should have been. To this day, the metric system is based on Mechain's lie.

"Alder describes how, when Napoleon's government set out to impose metrification on the French by law, even sending armed troops into Paris's main market to seize all non-metric scales, it proved so unpopular that in 1812 [not a good year for Napoleon - ed.] Napoleon abandoned it, allowing his countrymen to return to the old measures they preferred. From then on, Alder shows that, wherever the metric system has been imposed, it has always been a political act, suppressing the past in establishing a new entity; Germany, for example, in the 1860s, the Communist revolution in the Soviet Union and China, independence for India and the Empire, Britain's entry into the European Economic Community.

"Alder concludes by surveying a planet in which the only country to still be non-metric is the world's most advanced aconomy. Invariably, the metric system is hailed as more 'rational' and 'efficient' than the systems it replaces, although the only thing more rational about it is that it divides by 10.

"The current definition of a metre is that it is the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 seconds.

"But this definiton was only chosen because it happens to coincide exactly with the metre length based on M. Mechain's fudged figures. Even with all the ingenuity of modern science, the original lie on which the metric system rests has still not been corrected".


"The Measure of all Things: The Seven Year Odyssey that Transformed the World", (2002), Ken Alder (288pp.), Little, Brown

Ken Alder?

As I can remember that is also the man, who said America achieved best world economy status because of its antiquated system? Sure it does! That is why it owes the world trillions of dollars to finance its present living standard. Fine economy that one?

Yeah, all western nations, bar a couple, are massively in debt. Deal with it.

Re: Metrication and Utopia - A Review of Ken Alder's 'The Measure of all Things' August 2 2004, 9:35 AM


Bryan:
Yeah, all western nations, bar a couple, are massively in debt. Deal with it.

metre:
Not anywhere near Uncle Sam's astronomical amount. Seen from another angle, you are telling me that Alder talks nonsense maintaining obsolete measurements made America's economy strong? Using your argument confirms that conclusion, since nations using metric can also run up massive deficits.

Hang on a second!! How am I to be judged or argued against on the basis of what this Adler bloke says? He is nothing to do with me; I am not to answer for his arguements. :)

metre, you can't just compare dollar amounts of national debts. You have to look at the debt in relation to the size of the country. The US has a higher GDP than all the nations in the EU together. When you compare debt as a percentage of GDP, the US is very close to most industrialized countries.

Talking to eric about economies is akin to telling a rabid dog to "sit".

Re: Metrication and Utopia - A Review of Ken Alder's 'The Measure of all Things' August 3 2004, 8:33 AM

Bud:
metre, you can't just compare dollar amounts of national debts. You have to look at the debt in relation to the size of the country. The US has a higher GDP than all the nations in the EU together. When you compare debt as a percentage of GDP, the US is very close to most industrialized countries.

metre:
Can you verify that with percentages given?

http://www.arches.uga.edu/~csallen/amoser.htm

Scroll down to Table 2

You see, this is the way to do it eric.

Make a claim here but also get *ready to back that claim up with evidence*.

Ask your relatives in america about it I'm sure they'll "tell" you all about it.

Re: Metrication and Utopia - A Review of Ken Alder's 'The Measure of all Things' August 4 2004, 7:26 AM

Bud:
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~csallen/amoser.htm

Scroll down to Table 2

metre:
Thank's I did. Now do me the favour and look at
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/5Debt.htm
or,
http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/. There as many version as you like, but the graph shows America's ongoing deficit malaise. Mind you these figures do not include your astronomical trade deficits.

Metre, I responded to your original statement by saying that other countries are facing the same budget deficits as the US. (in proportion to the size of the country) Your 2 links above show only the size of the US deficit. They show nothing about any other countries. So how can they prove anything?

Re: Metrication and Utopia - A Review of Ken Alder's 'The Measure of all Things' August 6 2004, 9:13 AM


Bud:
Metre, I responded to your original statement by saying that other countries are facing the same budget deficits as the US. (in proportion to the size of the country) Your 2 links above show only the size of the US deficit. They show nothing about any other countries. So how can they prove anything?

metre:
I am surprised? You have a comparison of individual debts on that site. It shows you exactly where the US is in relation to other countries. Government debt is usually expressed in per capita debt.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/51More.htm

So why aren't you complaining that Belgium and Japan have too much public debt?

Re: Metrication and Utopia - A Review of Ken Alder's 'The Measure of all Things' August 10 2004, 5:47 AM

Bud:
So why aren't you complaining that Belgium and Japan have too much public debt?

metre:
Neither of them is pretending to be a superpower, nor do they force their ideas on other people.

So you're saying that the debt has nothing to do with it, it's only superpower status that annoys you. That makes a lot more sense.

Bud:
So why aren't you complaining that Belgium and Japan have too much public debt?

eric:
Neither of them is pretending to be a superpower, nor do they force their ideas on other people.

steve & the people of the UK:
Belgium comprises "brussels" does it not?

Re: Metrication and Utopia - A Review of Ken Alder's 'The Measure of all Things' August 11 2004, 8:24 AM

Bud:
So you're saying that the debt has nothing to do with it, it's only superpower status that annoys you. That makes a lot more sense.

metre:
You are entitled to assume anything. That won't change the fact that America can't sell many of it's products overseas because they are made to medieval specifications. Hence your astronomical trade and budget deficits.

Chrysler
IBM
Microsoft
Sun Microsystems
Hewlett Packard
Texas Instruments
Jeep
Harley Davidson
Coca Cola
Pepsi Cola
MacDonalds
Ford
Almost all handryers
Boeing
Plymouth
Hollywood
Countless fashion labels

How "off-topic" is this? Go and check the Dow listing

Maye somebody tells the dim-wit on this board the harsh reality. I couldn't be bothered.

Actually, you "can't"

Believe me, you'll never undestand why

I return to the origin of this thread, namely the review of Ken Alder's book by that well known anti-metric Christopher Booker.

Quote:
"In the grip of a nervous breakdown, he then set out to falsify findings, with the result that when Paris gathered in 1799 to watch the unveiling of the platinum bar, which fixed the length of the metre for all time, it was a fraction of a millimetre short of what it should have been. To this day, the metric system is based on Mechain's lie"

I have just obtained a copy of Alders book which I shall read with interest and will look out for the alleged "lie".

In the mean time I offer this observation:

The whole purpose of defining the metre to be 1 ten millionth of the quarter circumference of the Earth was to anchor it to a stable constant of nature. Given the circumstances of the survey, and the technology available to them, they can be forgiven for such a tiny error.

We now define that unit in terms of the speed of light and a very stable and accurate measure of time, based on an atomic clock. It's original definition is no longer relevent, but we succeed in the original quest to a finer degree than Delambre and Mechain could have hoped for. How the metre relates to any constant of nature is not the point. What matters is how accurately it can be reproduced.

In that modern metrologists have have been very successful indeed!

Stan,
why wasn't a decimal fraction of the Earth's radius or diameter chosen instead of the circumference? This is a much more accurate way of obtaining a length standard, and many people suggested it at the time. This would have resulted in a far more accurate metre. A metre, incidentally, equal to almost exactly 1/2 inch (using the figure of polar circumference as 40,008,000m, this 'metre' would be 0.5013757in).

At the time people suspected that the world was not a perfect sphere and since they measured one sector between Barcelona and Duinkerke (to give it its original spelling), there was less scope for error if they made no assumptions about the Southern Hempishere.

Martin, they only would have had to measure from the north pole to the centre of the Earth at the equator (in short, part of the world they knew about). They still would have got a better result than they actually did by their method.

Martin, they only would have had to measure from the north pole to the centre of the Earth at the equator (in short, part of the world they knew about). They still would have got a better result than they actually did by their method.

Bryan,

Maybe I should remind you that the survey was done in 1793 and that the first person to set foot on North Pole was Robert Peary in 1909. May I also remind you that at that time most of Africa had not yet been visited by Europeans. In view of this, how do you proposed that the survey should have been done.

BTW, have you ever done any actual surveying. Although I have not physically done any myself, I did shadow a survey team for a month when I was a student.

I've doen sociological surveys :p

Bryan,

I meant land surveying (using a theodolite etc)

Martin, do you happen to know how they calculated the circumference?

I know that at the time there was mich debate about whether the earth was a perfect sphere or not. What I do know is that latitude was measured using the stars as a reference point and that from a knowledge of latitude and the physical distance between Barcelona and Dunkirk, the length of the metre was deduced.

"I meant land surveying (using a theodolite etc)"

I know. Hence my smilie (:p). Y'see, I was having a laff with you. Get it yet? :p

So basically, the French revolutionaries were working on the assumption that the world was a perfect sphere. That would answer your question, Bryan. If the world were a perfect sphere, it would make no difference whether they based the definition of the metre on the circumference of the globe, a portion of the circumference, or the radius.

1. Many scientists beleived it wasn't a perfect sphere also.

2. A decimal fracton of the radius of the Earth is a different length to the same decimal fracton of the circumference of the Earth (and so thus the entire system would have been different)

But both could be measured with the same accuracy..

Bud wrote

<<
But both could be measured with the same accuracy..
>>

If the Earth was not a perfect sphere, they couldn't unless the surveyors concerned were able to get to the places that they wished to survey. In the 18th Century it was extremely difficult to make measurements at sea and 70% of the Earth's surface is sea. As it was, they were taking a big chance by just measuring the distance from Barcelona to Dunkirk.

Bud, think about it mate. If you measured the circumference along a different line of longitude, then the results would be different. However, from the north pole to the south, there are only two points, and no intervening mountains etc to change the measure. Do you follow me?

Who cares anyway, this debate is boring me now.

Martin, I was saying that the accuracy would be the same IF the earth was a perfect sphere.
Bryan, if the earth wasn't a perfect sphere, the distance from north to south pole would vary based on which longitude you went through. The diameter would be constant, but obviously they couldn't measure that.