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003    MWT 
005    20191125023912.0 
006    m     o  h         
007    sz zunnnnnuned 
007    cr nnannnuuuua 
008    160103s2002    xxunnn es      i  n eng d 
020    9780743562140 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) 
020    0743562143 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) 
029    https://d2snwnmzyr8jue.cloudfront.net/
       sas_9780743562140_180.jpeg 
028 42 MWT11512908 
037    11512908|bMidwest Tape, LLC|nhttp://www.midwesttapes.com 
040    Midwest|erda 
082 04 526 .1|221 
099    eAudiobook hoopla 
099    eAudiobook hoopla 
100 1  Alder, Ken 
245 14 The measure of all things :|bthe seven-year odyssey and 
       hidden error that transformed the world|h[Hoopla 
       electronic resource] /|cKen Alder. 
250    Abridged. 
264  1 [United States] :|bSimon & Schuster Audio,|c2002. 
264  2 |bMade available through hoopla 
300    1 online resource (1 audio file (360 min.)) :|bdigital. 
336    spoken word|bspw|2rdacontent 
337    computer|bc|2rdamedia 
338    online resource|bcr|2rdacarrier 
344    digital|hdigital recording|2rda 
347    data file|2rda 
506    Digital content provided by hoopla. 
511 1  Read by Brian Jennings. 
520    Amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid 
       astronomers set out in opposite directions from Paris to 
       measure the world, one voyaging north to Dunkirk, the 
       other south to Barcelona. Their findings would help define
       the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the
       pole and the equator, a standard that has since swept the 
       planet. The Measure of All Things is the astonishing story
       of one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission 
       to measure the Earth and define the meter for all nations 
       and for all time. Yet when Ken Alder located the long-lost
       correspondence between the two men, along with their 
       mission logbooks, he stumbled upon a two-hundred-year-old 
       secret, and a drama worthy of the great French 
       playwrights. The meter, it turns out, is in error. One of 
       the two astronomers, Pierre-François-André Méchain, made 
       contradictory measurements from Barcelona and, in a panic,
       covered up the discrepancy. The guilty knowledge of his 
       misdeed drove him to the brink of madness, and ultimately 
       to his death. Only then -- after the meter had already 
       been publicly announced -- did his partner, Jean-Baptiste-
       Joseph Delambre, discover the truth and face a fateful 
       choice: what matters more, the truth or the appearance of 
       the truth? To tell the story, Alder has not only worked in
       archives throughout Europe and America, but also bicycled 
       the entire route traveled by Delambre and Méchain. Both a 
       novelist and a prizewinning historian of science and the 
       French Revolution, Alder summons all his skills to tell 
       how the French Revolution mixed violent passion with the 
       coldest sanity to produce our modern world. It was a time 
       when scientists believed they could redefine the 
       foundations of space and time, creating a thirty-day month,
       a ten-day week, and a ten-hour day. History, they declared,
       was to begin anew. But in the end, it was science that was
       forever changed. The measurements brought back by Delambre
       and Méchain not only made science into a global enterprise
       and made possible our global economy, but also 
       revolutionized our understanding of error. Where Méchain 
       conceived of error as a personal failure, his successors 
       learned to tame it. This, then, is a story of two men, a 
       secret, and a timeless human dilemma: is it permissible to
       perpetuate a small lie in the service of a larger truth? 
       "Precision is a quest on which travelers, as Zeno foretold,
       journey halfway to their destination, and then halfway 
       again and again and again, never reaching finality. In The
       Measure of All Things Ken Alder describes a quest that 
       succeeded even as it failed. It is a story for all people,
       for all time. 
538    Mode of access: World Wide Web. 
650  0 Arc measures|xHistory. 
650  0 Meter (Unit)|xHistory. 
650  0 Metric system|xHistory. 
650  0 Astronomers|zFrance|xBiography. 
700 1  Jennings, Brian. 
710 2  hoopla digital. 
856 40 |uhttps://www.hoopladigital.com/title/
       11512908?utm_source=MARC|zInstantly available on hoopla. 
856 42 |zCover image|uhttps://d2snwnmzyr8jue.cloudfront.net/
       sas_9780743562140_180.jpeg