Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilledthe Promise of Democracy

I am a student of history but I learned a great deal reading this book that had passed me bye otherwise. Very pleasant reading. I recommend it to all.

The subtitle of this highly readable book is a bit purple -- "How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy" -- but what the author has to say makes a good case. It's also an amazingly action-packed adventure story. Any genealogist learns early the practical ins and outs of frontier settlement and the titles, grants, and other documents that land claims inevitably produce. In this country, there are two distinct methods of recording those claims: "metes and bounds" in the original colonies and some of their western lands (such as Kentucky) and in Texas, which describe the boundaries of one's land in terms of the points at which it adjoins or "meets" a neighbor's land, and the rectangular survey system developed for use in the public land states created from the nation's later territorial acquisitions. The latter is far more rational and allows a claim to be filed based on geographical location without having actually set foot on the land -- but it also requires preliminary measurement by a party of government surveyors. Linklater lays out in much detail, and with colorful anecdotes, how the first surveys were decided upon and carried out (more or less) in the Northwest Territory, and later in the Plains states and the West. He describes how, thanks to the efforts of Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. nearly adopted a rational metric system early in its history (which in France and Prussia was an instrument of centralized government policy), and how that goal was waylaid by clinging to Edmund Gunter's English chain/furlong system, which had the virtue of being easily understood by semi-literate surveyors with minimal mathematical skills. He relates the part played by rapacious land speculators (most of them members of the old aristocracy of New York, Massachusetts, and the Carolina low country), by frontier town-builders enamored of rectangular blocks (and why Manhattan has narrow, skimpy blocks compared to Philadelphia or Chicago), and how the railroads used the land-survey system to open up the continent while amassing enormous wealth. Though this volume is intended for the popular market, it also includes endnotes and a good bibliography.

I really enjoyed this book. This is one example of the kind of history that can be informative and yet hold the reader's attention, though I admit it is a subject that has interested me a lot anyway. The book's primary thrust is the history leading to the fact that we do not normally use the metric system in the U. S. I must say that it makes a good case for an idea that I'd never run across before: that this is primarily because the French, in devising the definition of the meter, departed from an idea that many people, including Thomas Jefferson, thought would give the most internationally reproducible standard. Reading this book, it really seems he has his facts right, and his argument is convincing.I found that the book clarified a number of points that I have wondered about.One negative thing is that his appendix in the end has some (probably typographical) errors: one table shows 101, 102, etc. for what slould really be 10 with exponents 1, 2, etc.) and in several other tables, "grains" becomes "gains."

Wonderful account of how Euro Americans transformed untamed Native American wilderness into square parcels of real estate. You'll never look at "fly over land" the same way again. I couldn't put this book down, and recommend it to those with any interest in geography, engineering, history, politics, or real estate.

Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy is a book filled with interesting information about how the government needed an accurate way to measure and sell lands west of the Ohio River.The United States' greatest asset was the land west of the Ohio River, but in order to sell this huge territory, it first had to be surveyed... measured and mapped. But before that could be accomplished, a uniform set of measurements had to be chosen for the new republic. In January 1790, George Washington put the establishment of a single system of weights and measures as one of his most urgent priorities... defense and currency were only deemed more important.This book is filled with interesting information about early America and tells a fascinating story of how this unique system was achieved and how it has profoundly shaped our country and its culture for more than two hundred years. This book tells us how the traditional view of the world was being increasingly challanged by objective reasoning.From measuring and mapping land for ownership the story is told. There is human and intellectual drama as cities are laid out in blocks, making for a grid pattern. Weights and measures were being standardized making for better and fairer commerce. All leading to the ultimately gained American Customary System... the last traditional system in the world.I found the book to be very readable and highly informative. It is well-written and gives the reader a broad understandng for why weights and measures were important... for without them the United States wouldn't exist.