Rosemary F. (canadianeh) reviewed on 12/23/2008 + 242 more book reviews

This is a detailed look at the exacting task undertaken by 2 men to obtain the correct measurement of the meter - one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator. It's not so much about an error that was made, as about the nature of the work and the efforts required: innumerable readings taken at precise locations along a baseline, without deviation "commandeering...church steeples, fortress towers, observation platorms" along hills, valleys and rocky terrain. The painstaking precision was not for the faint of heart. I am amazed by the assembling of data and computation that took place for this job - without computers or even calculators and at the time of the French Revolution!

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