'The Measure Of All Things' tells the story of how science, revolutionary politics and the dream of a new economy converged to produce both the metric system and the first struggle over globalisation.
Amidst the scientific fervour of the Revolution two French scientists, Delambre and Mechain, were sent out on an expedition to measure the shape of the world and thereby establish the metre - which was to be one ten-millionth the distance from pole to equator. Their hope was that people would use the globe as the basis of measurement rather than an arbitrary system meted out by the monarchs.
As one scientist went north along the French meridian and the other south, they could not know the deadly obstacles that lay ahead.
'The Measure Of All Things' is the wonderfully exciting and human story of how two scientists changed the way in which we look at the world.
