The Measure of the World by Denis Guedj, University of Chicago Press,
拢17.50, ISBN 0226310302
Measurements in the France of the Ancien R茅gime were chaotic. Length,
for instance, could be given in units based on the size of a royal foot; or wine
in six different quantities. There were 800 or so measures in use. Guedj鈥檚 novel
is the story of the origin of the metre, a seemingly dull subject. Wrong. It鈥檚 a
tale of adventure, drama, comedy and danger and its background is the turbulence
and terror of the French Revolution.
The Revolutionary government, fired by high ideals and logic, decided to fix
a standard unit of length founded on the dimensions of the Earth. A baseline of
a quadrant, a quarter of its circumference, was needed. This could be calculated
from the measurement of the meridian running from Dunkirk to Barcelona. In 1792
two astronomers, Pierre M茅chain and Jean Baptiste Delambre, were
authorised by the imprisoned Louis XVI to determine its length. They set off,
M茅chain for Barcelona and Delambre for Dunkirk, to work their
triangulating way back to the centre. The novel follows their anxious, rigorous
journeys. They were harassed by revolutionary troops, arrested as spies,
suffered peasant hostility, obstruction, suspicion of witchcraft and physical
exhaustion. They took six years to complete the job, and even then there was a
last minute cliffhanger that threatened success. But the eventual result was
triumph: the installation of the metre as one ten-millionth of the quarter
meridian.
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Guedj, who is also a film scriptwriter, keeps this odyssey on the move though
confessing that he sees it more as a film. Arthur Goldhammer鈥檚 translation from
the French is miraculous. The price, for a paperback, is impressive.