Weighing the World: The Quest to Measure the Earth
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.13 (879 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0195384954 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-17 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
No one knew, with any certainty, the shape of the earth or what lay beneath its surface. A spell-binding scientific adventure story, Weighing the World will intrigue anyone curious about the shape of our planet and how we have come to know it.. Was it hollow or solid? Were the Andes the highest mountains on the Earth or was it the peak of Tenerife? Was the Earth a perfect sphere or slightly squashed as Sir Isaac Newton prophesized? In Weighing the World, master-surveyor and bestselling author Edwin Danson presents the stories of the scientists and scholars who cut their way through jungles, crossed the artic tundra, and braved the world's highest mountains to discover the truth about our Earth. At the start of the 18th century there were no maps, anywhere in the world. Danson also recounts the extraordinary experiment, conducted on a desolate Scottish peak by Astromer Royal Neville Maskelyne, to understand the so-called "attraction of mountains," the curious capability mountians have to bend gravity, without which it would be impossible to accurately map Earth's surface
Providing considerable technical detail about problems confronting savants such as Cassini, Danson does not neglect the road-trip aspect of the cavalcades organized to tackle them. With biographical sketches of the French and British organizers, Danson enlivens data about geodetic surveying, transforming them into greatly interesting dramas of science. He covers the French dominance of surveying up to the mid-1700s, which featured such epics as the 1735 survey of the length of longitude in the Andes, then naturally shifts to British ascendance in the century's second half. Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. Danson reaches back a century before their survey, to the 1660s, when scientific surveying was incubating at France's l'Academie Royale des Sciences. From Booklist Questions about the earth's true shape and dimension plagued everyone, especially scientists and soldiers, during the Age of Reason, and adventurous expeditions we
Five Stars David Miller Arrived in better condition than advertised.. "Fascinating Even For Non-Math Majors" according to Cassandra_was_right. The author is clearly an expert in his subjects' fields, so much of his descriptions of their meticulous work might be lost on the reader who, like me, is not a geographer, not an astronomer, and possesses only rudimentary math skills. Even so, I could not put this book down. The drive to measure the world precisely, to figure out where exactly everything is, makes sense, but the actual painstaking process of doing that is something I admit to never having given much thought before, and here it comes across both clearly and compellingly. The wonderful characters who propelled this effort forward are described sp. Traveler said Documented history in a readable prose. A remarkable book, addictive notwithstanding the huge amount of historical facts that the author displays packed in nearly "Documented history in a readable prose" according to Traveler. A remarkable book, addictive notwithstanding the huge amount of historical facts that the author displays packed in nearly 280 pages. Every page is full of data for the human struggle for knowledge in the XVIII century. Highly recommendable.. 80 pages. Every page is full of data for the human struggle for knowledge in the XVIII century. Highly recommendable.
He is the author of Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America. . Edwin Danson is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors