1,500 kilometers in search of a meter
Born June 24, 1792 Still in the midst of the revolution, two expeditions of several cars left the French capital in the opposite direction. One of them headed for Barcelona, while the other headed for Dunkerque. They both had the same goal: to measure the world.
A few months earlier, the National Assembly decided that a standard measure was needed to deal with the chaos of the time; more than 700 units of measurement were used in France. The length of the feet varied according to the king on the throne, the male was shorter for those who had small hands and also dominated the yard and mile of Anglo-Saxon origin, something that the good French could not accept.
To choose the measure, they needed a universal and stable reference, and for that they chose the Earth. The measure would be called metre, metron, Greek word meaning measure. I assume that ten million of the meridian quadrant passing through Paris. Thus, to find the exact size of the meridian and later of the metro, the line from Dunkerque to Barcelona was chosen. Joseph Delambre (1749-1822) was sent to the North and to the South addressed Pierre Mechain (1744-1804).
The two astronomers used a triangulation system to perform measurements, which required leaving signals at the heights.
Heavy cars and bad weather were not the only enemies of the expedition. Many of the signals left in the bells disappeared, as the anti-religious current ravaged the churches. They had shattered many of the signs that they had left in the hills, painted white to be well seen, and the white was the color of the monarchy. As a result, armed men were forced to leave at the measuring points to protect the signals. Of course, this made expeditions more expensive and slowed down.
The data collected was not very accurate. Mechain himself mentioned in a written letter to Delambra “the unfortunate measurements of Barcelona”. Finally, seven years and 1,500 kilometers later, upon returning to Paris, they were welcomed as heroes. By then, the account was already very much related to national pride and they had to present the result. The data was adjusted to the public to fit, a credible result was agreed and that approximate meter was presented to the world. Compared to the ten million reais of the Earth's Meridian quadrant, the Mechain and Delambre Metro, which we use today, is 0.2589658655 times higher.
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