The Measure of All Things
Page 40
NOTE ON SOURCES
This book is based on original sources, the vast bulk of them unedited manuscripts written in French. Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are my own. The main cache of papers regarding the metric expedition of 1792–99 is located in the E2 series of the archives of the Observatoire de Paris. Important additional Delambre papers are located in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut National, the library of Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, and the Karpeles Museum in Santa Barbara, California, as well as in holdings in Amiens, New York, London, and Utrecht. Important additional Méchain papers are located in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa and in the Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, as well as in holdings in Laon, Milan, and Madrid. Other valuable papers on these two savants, on their contemporaries, and on the metric system in general can be found in the archives of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, as well as in dozens of additional major and minor archives and libraries in Paris, the French provinces, and throughout the world. Below I list those institutions where I found the documents cited in the endnotes and the acronyms and other abbreviations I use when citing them. Following each citation of an archival source, I provide the carton reference number for scholars who wish to locate that document. I want to thank the archivists and librarians who assisted me with my research, and especially the staff of the interlibrary loan office at Northwestern University.
As the endnotes stick closely to the material presented in the text, I would like to acknowledge several key intellectual debts here. The foremost historian of metrology is the great Polish economic historian Witold Kula, whose book Measures and Men, translated by R. Szreter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) helped me to formulate the argument of this book, although I differ with him in my conclusions. My thinking on political economy has been shaped by the work of Karl Polyani, whose The Great Transformation (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1944) is a neglected and sometimes baffling classic. In the past decade a new approach to the history of science has transcended the simplistic division between technical histories and contextual studies. The most helpful works on the intersection of the exact sciences and social-cultural values have been the writings of Lorraine Daston, Simon Schaffer, Steven Shapin, M. Norton Wise, and especially Theodore Porter, whose Trust in Numbers: Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) has inspired me time and again. For general histories of the metric system, no one has yet surpassed two rather dated works from the beginning of the twentieth century: Guillaume Bigourdan, Le système métrique des poids et mesures (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1901), and Adrien Favre, Les origines du système métrique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1931). The one strong recent treatment is the wry article by John L. Heilbron, “The Measure of Enlightenment,” in The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century, Tore Frängsmyr, John L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 207–42. My own analysis of the political and economic significance of the metric system can be found in Ken Alder, “A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System,” in The Values of Precision, M. Norton Wise, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 39–71.
Abbreviations of Archives and Libraries
AAS = Archives de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris
ADAu = Archives Départementales de l’Aude, Carcassonne
ADC = Archives Départementales du Cher, Bourges
ADPO = Archives Départementales des Pyrénées-Orientales, Perpignan
ADSe = Archives Départementales de la Seine, Paris
ADSM = Archives Départementales de Seine-et-Marne, Melun
ADSo = Archives Départementales de la Somme, Amiens
ADT = Archives Départementales du Tarn, Albi
AHAP = Archives Historiques de l’Archevêché de Paris, Paris
AMAE = Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris
AMSD = Archives Municipales de Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis
AML = Archives Municipales, Lagny
AMNM = Archivos del Museo Naval de Madrid, Madrid
AN = Archives Nationales, Paris
AOAB = Archivio dell’Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Milan
AOP = Archives de l’Observatoire de Paris, Paris
APS = American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia
BA = Bibliothèque de l’Arsénal, Paris
BEP = Bibliothèque de l’Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau
BI = Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris
BL = Bureau des Longitudes, Paris
BLL = British Library, London
BLUC = Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
BMA = Bibliothèque Municipale d’Amiens, Amiens
BMC = Bibliothèque Municipale de Carcassonne, Carcassonne
BMCF = Bibliothèque Municipale de Clermont-Ferrand, Clermont-Ferrand
BML = Bibliothèque Municipale de Laon, Laon
BMR = Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, Reims
BMSD = Bibliothèque Municipale de Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis
BN = Bibliothèque Nationale, Tolbiac, Paris
BNR = Bibliothèque Nationale, Richelieu, Manuscripts, Paris
BNRC = Bibliothèque Nationale, Richelieu, Cartes, Paris
BUP = Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa, Pisa
BVCS = Bibliothèque Victor-Cousin, Sorbonne, Paris
BYU = Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
CNAM = Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris
CUL = Lavoisier Collection, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
CUS = David Eugene Smith Collection, Columbia University, New York
DLSI = Dibner Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
ENPC = Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris
KBD = Kongelige Bibliotek of Denmark, Copenhagen
KM = Karpeles Museum, Santa Barbara, California
NL = Newberry Library, Chicago
NYPL = Rare Books and Manuscripts, New York Public Library, New York
SBB = Staatsbibliotek Berlin, Berlin
SHAT = Service Historique des Armées de Terre, Vincennes UBL = Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht, Utrecht
WL = Wellcome Library, London
Abbreviations of Serial Works
AP = Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860; recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises. First series, 1789 to 1799. Paris: Dupont, 1875–.
AP2 = Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860; recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises. Second series, 1800 to 1860. Paris: Dupont, 1862–1913.
ASPV = Académie des Sciences, Procès-verbaux des séances de l’Académie tenues depuis la fondation de l’Institut jusqu’au mois d’août 1835. Hendaye, Basse-Pyrénées: Imprimerie de l’Observatoire d’Abbadia, 1910–1922.
CR = Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences. Sessions since 1835. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1835–1965.
CT = Connaissance des temps ou des mouvements célestes, pour le méridien de Paris, à l’usage des astronomes et des navigateurs. Paris, 1766–. Exact title and publisher varies. After 1795, edited by the Bureau des Longitudes.
HAS = Académie des Sciences, Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences. Paris: 1666–1792.
MAS = Académie des Sciences, Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences. Paris: 1666-1792.
MC = F.-X. von Zach, ed., Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erdund Himmels-Kunde. Gotha: Beckersche, 1800–1813.
MI = Académie des Sciences, Mémoires de l’Institut. Paris: 1795-1815.
Moniteur = Moniteur universelle, [also known as Gazette nationale]. Paris: Agasse, 1789–1810.
PVCIP = James Guillaume, ed., Procès-verbaux du Comité d’Instruction Publique de la Convention Nationale. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1891–1907.
RACSP = François-Alphonse Aulard, ed., Recueil des actes du Comité de Salut
Public. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1889–1951.
Abbreviations of Institutions
ATPM = Agence Temporaire des Poids et Mesures
CIP = Comité d’Instruction Publique de la Convention Nationale
CPM = Commission des Poids et Mesures
Dépt. = Département
Min. Aff. Etr. = Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
Min. Int. = Ministère de l’Intérieur
NOTES
PROLOGUE
“Ye shall do”: Leviticus, 19:35–36, in The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1955).
“[I]n France,” he complained, “the infinite”: Arthur Young, Travels During the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789 (Dublin: Gross, 1793), 2:43–44. For the number of measurement names, see ATPM, Aux citoyens rédacteurs de la Feuille du Cultivateur (Paris: Imprimerie de la République, III [1795]), 11. For the number of measurement units, see Ronald Zupko, French Weights and Measures Before the Revolution: A Dictionary of Provincial and Local Units (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 113.
“Conquests will”: KM, Delambre, Base du système métrique décimal, 1:title page.
John Quincy Adams: For the comparison with the printing press and the steam engine, see John Quincy Adams (Secretary of State), “Weights and Measures,” U.S. Senate, 22 February 1821; 16th Congress, 2nd Session, in Walter Lowrie and Walter S. Franklin, eds., American State Papers: Documents (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834), no. 503, class 10, 2:656–750; see p. 688.
“It was not enough”: Napoléon, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France sous Napoléon, écrits à Sainte-Hélène, Gaspard Gourgaud and Charles-Tristan Montholon, eds. (London: Bossagne, 1823–24), 4:211.
“without omission”: Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre, Rapport historique sur les progrès des sciences mathématiques depuis 1789 (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1810), 68. Delambre, ed., Base du système métrique décimal, ou mesure de l’arc du méridien compris entre les parallèles de Dunkerque et Barcelone, exécutée en 1792 et années suivantes, par MM. Méchain et Delambre (Paris: Baudouin, 1806, 1807, 1810); cited hereafter as Delambre, Base. For prior histories of the metric system, see the Note on Sources.
“I deposit”: AOP E2-9, Delambre’s final comments in Méchain’s notebook, c. 1810.
“Though Méchain”: Delambre (c. 1810), marginal note on AOP E2-19, Méchain to Delambre, 7 brumaire VII [28 October 1798].
“Conquests will”: KM, Delambre, Base, 1:title page.
ONE: THE NORTH-GOING ASTRONOMER
“Fabrice showed”: Stendhal, La chartreuse de Parme (Paris: Garnier, 1962), 31.
“any unknown”: AML, Conseil Municipal, “Déliberations,” 21 August 1792. See also Georges Darney, Histoire de Lagny (Paris: Office d’Edition et Diffusion du Livre d’Histoire, 1994), 179. Jean Alexandre conversed with a gendarme near Lagny on 4 September 1792; see Pierre Caron, Les massacres de septembre (Paris: Maison du Livre Français, 1935), 160–61.
“share with their”: Pétion, mayor of Paris, read into the municipal records of Lagny, August 1792, in Darney, Lagny, 178.
a party of militiamen: For the actions of the Lagny militia, see AML, Conseil Municipal, “Déliberations,” August–September 1792; see also Darney, Lagny, 180. On Petit-Jean, see Delambre to Madame d’Assy, [August 1792], quoted in Guillaume Bigourdan, Le système métrique des poids et mesures (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1901), 118–19; also Petit-Jean to Delambre, received on 12 August 1792, in AOP E2-6, Delambre, “Registre,” 12.
presented his passport: For Delambre’s passport, see Municipalité de Bruyères-Libre, “Certificat,” 17 prairial III [5 June 1795], cited in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 134.
Benjamin Bellet: On Bellet, see AAS Lavoisier 1967, Lavoisier, “Etat des ouvriers et coopérateurs . . . ,” [1792–93].
“There is no more ’Cademy”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22.
“exhausted every reserve”: AAS Fonds Lavoisier Nouvelle Ac. 30, Lavoisier to Delambre, 28 August 1792.
“They were armed”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22.
the militia’s “invitation” and “And as we marched”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22.
“odious king” and “perfidious proclamations”: Mayor Aublan in municipal council, 16 August 1792, in Darney, Lagny, 176.
“not to consider themselves”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22, emphasis in original. See AML, Conseil Municipal, “Déliberations,” 4 September 1792.
“That night we had nothing”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22.
“Consigned to”: AOP E2-6, Delambre, “Registre,” 4 September 1792, 49.
the “little trouble”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22.
“thanked the municipality”: AML, Conseil Municipal, “Déliberations,” 5 September 1792.
“And so ends the true”: Delambre to Mme. d’Assy, 5 September 1792, in Bigourdan, Système métrique, 119–22.
He was born: For Delambre’s autobiography, see BI MS2042 fols. 408–14, Delambre, “Delambre par lui-même,” [1821]; cited hereafter as Delambre, “Lui-même.” Delambre’s student Claude-Louis Mathieu drew on this unpublished autobiography for his biography in Mathieu, “Delambre,” Biographie universelle, Michaud, ed., new ed. (Paris: Desplaces, n.d.), 304–8. Vulfran Warmé, Eloge historique de M. Delambre (Amiens: Caron-Duquenne, 1824); ADSo 2E21/25, “Acte de mariage de Jean-Nicolas-Joseph Delambre et Marie-Elisabeth Devisme,” 27 January 1749; “Baptême de Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre,” 19 September 1749.
“To love riches”: BMA MS568(18), Delambre, “Règles ou méthode facile pour apprendre la langue anglaise,” n.d. On the literary club, see AAS Dossier Delambre, Résumé of letters from Delambre to Favart fils, sold by Cabinet Henri Saffroy in June 1943. See also AAS Col. Bertrand 9, Delambre to Favart fils, 20 October 1769.
Jean-Claude Geoffroy d’Assy: On the d’Assy family, see Jean-Pierre Babelon, “L’hôtel d’Assy, 58 bis, rue des Francs-Bourgeois au Marais,” Paris et Ile-de-France, Mémoires 14 (1964): 169–96; 16/17 (1965–66): 231–40.
“You’re wasting”: Delambre, “Lui-même.”
“the abbé de Lambre”: BVCS MS99, Lalande, “Journal,” 1783. Lalande first noticed Delambre on 10 December 1782; see Joseph-Jérôme Le Français de Lalande, Bibliographie astronomique; avec l’histoire de l’astronomie depuis 1781 jusqu’à 1802 (Paris: Imprimerie de la République, XI, 1803), 597.
“Don’t be a fool”: Delambre, “Lui-même.” On Delambre’s assistance for Lalande, see AOP Z151(4), Lalande to [Delambre], 17 December 1783. Also “Lalande au rédacteur,” Moniteur 2 (1 December 1789): 273.
his own private observatory: For Delambre’s observatory, see CUS, Delambre to Cagnoli, 3 September [1788] and 23 November 1789. Also Guillaume Bigourdan, Histoire de l’astronomie d’observation et des observatoires en France, seconde partie (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1930), 155–65.
Any butcher: For Geoffroy d’Assy’s lawsuit to block a butcher from opening a shop in his territory in the 1780s, see AN AB XIX 322, d’Assy, 3, 13 September 1785.
“encompass nothing”: Talleyrand, AP 24 (26 March 1791): 397.
In April 1791: For the election of the first expedition team, see AAS, “Procès-verbaux de l’Académie” 109 (13 April 1791): 321.
“How’s that, Monsieur Cassini?”: BNRC Ge DD 2066 (3), Cassini IV, “2ème dialogue,” 43–45. Said by Cassini to be a “word-for-word” recitation of the exchange.
“illicit, usurping, seditious”: BNRC Ge DD 2066 (3), Cassini IV, “Mémoires,” 72–73; “2ème dialogue,” 25–26.
Roland threatened: For Roland’s threat, see AP 41 (3 April 1792): 110. Roland pressed the Academy again in May; see AN F12 1288,
Roland to Comité d’Agriculture et Commerce, 19 May 1792. The academicians discussed their fear of Roland’s goals in AAS Chabrol 1/71, Borda to Condorcet, [May 1792].
unanimously elected: AAS, “Procès-verbaux de l’Académie” 110 (2, 5 May 1792): 138–39, 142. For Delambre’s account of this period, see Delambre, “Lui-même.” Also Delambre, Grandeur et figure de la terre (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1912), 205. The division of sectors was provisional; see ENPC MS726, Delambre, “Mesure du méridien,” 19 messidor II [7 July 1794].
As soon as the king’s: For the arrival of the king’s proclamation on June 24, see Delambre, Grandeur, 203. For his start date of June 24, see AOP E2-6, Delambre, “Registre,” 2. Also see chapter 2 below.
the summit of Montmartre: On Montmartre, see Delambre, Base, 1:23.
learned that the Collégiale chapel: On the sale of the Collégiale, see ADSM 1Q1047/2, “Une église charpent . . . ,” 27 November, 11 December 1792. On the Saint-Martin-du-Tertre station, see AOP E2-6, Delambre, “Registre,” 51.