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Enlightenment ideals, land speculation and geometry intersect
Measuring America
How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy
By Andro Linklater
Walker. 310 pp. $26
Reviewed by Richard DiDio
Philadelphia Inquirer - Sunday, Nov. 24, 2002
For those confused about the difference between a "fifth" and "three-quarters of a liter" of Scotch, imagine purchasing libations in 18th-century America. After all, a Boston brewer's hogshead of beer, with two cooms, four kilderkins, eight rundlets, or 64 gallons, differed in size from a Pennsylvania hogshead, which in turn changed depending on whether beer was sold inside or outside an inn.
In Andro Linklater's remarkable Measuring America, attempts to standardize measurement units provide the backdrop to the development of the early American republic. Weaving a history of eccentric surveyors with Jeffersonian philosophy, Linklater suggests that America's democracy resulted from the interplay of Enlightenment ideals, land speculation and utilitarian geometry.
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