Measuring America

How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise ofD emocracy

Andro Linklater (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

320 Seiten

2003
New American Library (Verlag)
978-0-452-28459-3 (ISBN)

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In 1790, America was in enormous debt, having depleted what little money and supplies the country had during its victorious fight for independence. Before the nation's greatest asset, the land west of the Ohio River, could be sold it had to be measured out and mapped. And before that could be done, a uniform set of measurements had to be chosen for the new republic out of the morass of roughly 100,000 different units that were in use in daily life.Measuring America tells the fascinating story of how we ultimately gained the American Customary System—the last traditional system in the world—and how one man's surveying chain indelibly imprinted its dimensions on the land, on cities, and on our culture from coast to coast.

Andro Linklater (1944–2013) was a journalist, biographer, and author. Linklater was most known for exploring the history of property ownership in America in his work. His books include The Fabric of America and Measuring America. He died at age 68 of a heart attack while researching for a new book on the history of land possession in the Hebrides.

Measuring AmericaIntroduction
One: The Invention of Landed Property

Two: Precise Confusion

Three: Who Owned America?

Four: Life, Liberty, or What?

Five: Simple Arithmatic

Six: A Line Drawn in the Wilderness

Seven: The French Dimension

Eight: Democratic Decimals

Nine: The Birth of the Metric System

Ten: Dombey's Luck

Eleven: The End of Putnam

Twelve: The Immaculate Grid

Thirteen: The Shape of Cities

Fourteen: Hassler's Passion

Fifteen: The Dispossesed

Sixteen: The Limit of Enclosure

Seventeen: Four Against Ten

Eighteen: Metric Triumphant

Epilogue: The Witness Tree

Acknowledgments
Appendix: General Tables of Units of Measurement
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 213 mm
Gewicht	295 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte
	Technik ► Bauwesen
ISBN-10	0-452-28459-7 / 0452284597
ISBN-13	978-0-452-28459-3 / 9780452284593
Zustand	Neuware