World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUL 25, 2011

Anyone who doubts the romance and history to be found in a meter stick will find this book a revelation. As Crease notes, the human body is the first and oldest measuring device in the world; for example, nearly every civilization has the equivalent of a "foot. In China, systems of measurement date back to the third millennium B.C.E., ., eventually becoming, as one scholar wrote, "a metaphor for the moral and spiritual order of the universe . The first effort to create worldwide standards of distance and weight came from the French Revolution, with the meter (based on a fraction of the Earth's meridian), and the kilogram (the weight of a cubic deciliter of water). But for the terrible luck of a wayward French emissary, America might have adopted the metric system around 1800. More precise measures now define the meter in terms of atomic wavelengths, and atomic values will probably also be used to define the kilogram. Through entertaining anecdotes and history, Stony Brook philosophy chair and Physics World columnist Crease (The Great Equations) ably reveals our modern world as a "metroscape shaped by the things we measure and the way we measure them. 35 illus.