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o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o +
Paradoxical isn't it ! On the one hand, there were zillions of local
measurement units; on the other hand, by 1669 the French had the most
accurate absolute measurement in the world for long distances, thanks to
Jean Picard (and by the early 18th century the Cassinis had made France
was best-mapped nation in the world). So the question is- did De Fer,
working at about the same time as the Cassinis, under French royal
patronage, and having access to the Picard data, make use of it to
define his League by reference to the Earth's circumference? Perhaps
measurement on the map itself, between points which are likely to have
been positioned with maximum accuracy, can help provide an answer.
David Bradbury
Joel Kovarsky wrote:
I cannot help but wonder if the Britannica statement packages this too
neatly: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Measurement.html .
"In France, on the other hand, there was no standardisation and as
late as 1788 Arthur Young wrote in "/Travels during the years
/1787, 1788, 1789" published in 1793:-
/In France the infinite perplexity of the measures exceeds all
comprehension. They differ not only in every province, but in
every district and almost every town./
In fact it has been estimated that France had about 800 different
names for measures at this time, and taking into account their
different values in different towns, around 250,000 differently
sized units. To a certain extent this reflected the powers which
resided in the hands of local nobles who had resisted all attempts
by the French King over centuries to standardise measures. Diderot
and d'Alembert
<http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/D%27Alembert.html>
in their /Encyclopédie/ greatly regretted the diversity, but saw
no possible acceptable solution to the problem. Some French
scientists had proposed uniform systems at least 100 years before
the French Revolution. Gabriel Mouton
<http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Mouton.html>,
in 1670, had suggested that the world should adopt a uniform scale
of measurement based on the mille, which he defined as the length
of one minute of the Earth's arc. He proposed that decimal
subdivisions should be used to determine the lengths of shorter
units of length. Lalande
<http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Lalande.html>,
in April 1789, proposed that the measures used in Paris should
become national ones, an attempt at standardisation but not
rationalisation. This proposal was put to the National Assembly in
February 1790 but in March a different suggestion was made.
Talleyrand put to the National Assembly a proposal due to
Condorcet
<http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Condorcet.html>,
namely that a new measurement system be adopted based on a length
from nature. The system should have decimal subdivisions, all
measures of area, volume, weight etc should be linked to the
fundamental unit of length. The basic length should be that of a
pendulum which beat at the rate of one second. The proposal was
adopted."
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