Measure of the World A Novel

On June 24, 1792, two large traveling coaches left the Tuileries, one headed to Dunkirk, the other to Barcelona. They carried the astronomers Pierre MÉchain and Jean-Baptiste Delambre, who had been ordered by the French Revolutionary government to survey the meridian that passes through both cities and divide it to create a natural and universal unit of measure, the meter. The Measure of the World is the story of this strange and wonderful mission. Denis Guedj has written a novelistic account of the measurement project that relies heavily on archival sources-a more "traditional" history could not possibly describe how a sober scientific enterprise became a journey filled with adventures and experiences so bizarre as to be hardly credible. In tumultuous revolutionary and postrevolutionary France, MÉchain and Delambre were objects of suspicion as they traveled through the provinces, climbing steeples and deploying strange instruments--they were detained as spies, taken for charlatans or fleeing royalists, and arrested for debt. Their perilous labors lasted until 1799, when the meter was formally established. Arthur Goldhammer's crisp translation of this remarkable novel retains the flavor of the original, and an appendix explains Guedj's use of historical materials. A vivid recreation of a fascinating and troubling period in history juxtaposed with the achievement of a complicated scientific undertaking, The Measure of the World is a marvelous book-not science fiction, but fiction about science.Guedj, Denis is the author of 'Measure of the World A Novel' with ISBN 9780226310305 and ISBN 0226310302.