Why is a kilogram a kilogram, I asked; why an inch an inch. I understand these questions more fully now, for if measurement is the mode by which we interact with the world, then it makes sense to ask where these systems come from and if there is any logic to them.

James Vincent is a journalist for The Verge magazine who became interested in the science of measurement – or metrology – when he was covering the changeover in Paris from a physical, metal metre to a measure involving the speed of light, an event he also describes in detail in his book.

By the end of the book, he has an answer, of sorts, to his question, and one that he feels puts the humanity and changeability back into something that has become ever more technical. Along the way, he’s taken us through a basically chronological survey of measurement, from the nilometers along Egypt’s river which were used to predict crops or famine by showing how far the floods rose to the quantification of all human life through the use of wearable trackers.

He has to digress into the history of science, of writing systems, even, to show us how and where measurements developed, paying particular attention to those huge shifts that often happen alongside other sociological phenomena: had you realised that the metric system was codified during the French Revolution?

Vincent describes several meetings with people who can explain various measurements to him, starting off in Egypt going into a nilometer, and also visiting Sweden and Paris and having a video call with a figure from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology which keeps a huge range of samples for use in calibration or validation (from peanut butter that has a specific mix of ingredients to standard cigarettes to use in testing flame retardency). I noted that he makes the effort to consult female experts as well as male. Less expert is a chap from Active Resistance to Metrication, who go around altering signposts back to imperial distances (even though the EU actually allowed joint or alternative measures for fruit and veg and signposts in the UK, contrary to popular opinion). These forays into the real world (or the depths of archives) break up the theory and make the book even more lively and interesting.

I learned a huge array of things from this book; I must first explain that it is very accessible, even when it’s going into atoms and quantum physics or the philosophy of measurement and what can even be measured. Vincent has a facility for making concepts clear, and while he generously thanks a whole range of writers and academics in his Acknowledgements, as well as people who helped him with his text, this is a feature vital in such a work of popular science, and successful (I’m of reasonable intelligence and interested in the topic but my science studies apart from in geography and a big of post-grad statistics ended with my O-levels). So I learned that mid-western (in particular) America looks like that when you’re flying over it because of the Public Land Survey System, which not only drew the borders of the states but quantified field size. ISO measurements on a camera are called that from the International Standards Organization. The Centigrade scale for measuring temperature is called that because it divides temperatures into hundredths between the freezing and boiling points of water (you probably all knew that, but all the other temperature scales are named after people, so …).

Mentioning the quantification of America, while Vincent does have a gap in his coverage when it comes to Africa, the Near East and India, leaving African things at the Egyptians, covering Arab scholars briefly and mentioning only the use of mapping for the Scramble for Africa and the measurement and control of India, he is good on pointing out the negative uses of metrology, including for colonialism. He points out wherever it’s relevant that measurement was used to impose colonialism, as well as the use of measurement in eugenics, and he uses an Indigenous American source when writing about the stealing of land in that continent, and also talks at length about the use of measures in the Vietnam War and their use in the “dehumanisation of the Other”. He also raises the issue of algorithms being based on corpuses that include racist and sexist content and therefore perpetuating such horrors.

A wonderfully entertaining and illuminating account of measurement from the earliest references to the present day. An intelligent and insightful account of what drives humans to measure the world around them. A treasure trove of history, science, facts and figures all narrated clearly and accessibly, with just the right amount of personal interjection. A must-read.

It would be easy to write a very average book to be written about the science of measurement, but James Vincent hasn't written an average book. At every opportunity, alongside the science he dives into the history, philosophy, politics and more of measurement, with a wit and care that lifts Beyond Measure into something very special. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

In Beyond Measure, James Vincent has achieved something quite tricky, that is created a most enjoyable read about measuring things. His enthusiasm for the subject is infectious as he delves deep into the history of defining and standardising various measurements, weight, length/ distance, temperature and so on, and the people (not all scientists) who did so. He also looks at the current obsession with return to imperial units and the need to continuously measure ourselves, the Quantified Self movement – how we sleep, what we eat, how many steps we take daily. It doesn’t surprise that the latter, with ’10,000 steps a day’ slogan was originally a marketing campaign with no science to back it.

Beyond Measure takes in politics, sociology, eugenics (particularly chilling) as well as science and history of metrology. An impressive read, highly recommended.

My thanks to Faber & Faber and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Beyond Measure.

A well researched and fascinating book. Measure systems are not only numbers but also political and due to historical fact.
This book starts in the ancient world and tells a fascinating story. The author is a good storyteller and the book was informative and enjoyable.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

In Beyond Measure James Vincent explores the history of measurement and how it has made the world we live in.

Measurement it's something we today take for granted, but as James Vincent shows in this well-researched book, it's taken a very long time to accurately define a value. How, for instance, do you test the reliability of a thermometer without already possessing a reliable device to record temperature as a benchmark? Apart from a conundrum like this Vincent has unearthed some fascinating facts. The Egyptians invented the nilometer to gauge the depth of the Nile's floodwaters, thus accurately predicting whether the following harvest would be slim or, given a high flood, bountiful. The Saami peoples of Northern Europe defined 6 miles as a poronkusema, they relied on reindeer for food, trade and labour, this unit defined the distance a reindeer will walk before urinating. The universally adopted measure of length, the metre, was actually calculated 0.2 millimetres short of its intended length. As you would expect the book's measurements are also gjven including its weight and the amount of ink used to print the text. If anything James Vincent goes into extraordinary detail in describing how accurate measurements have been achieved, but I suppose that is the purpose of the book. Thank you Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the advance reader copy.

I loved this book. It went way beyond a dry discussion of meters and kilograms. There is a considerable and fascinating discussion of the historical and political implications of measurement. The book was a pleasure to read and I found it hard to put down. The writing style is conversational, with some clever wording and puns. This book is well worth reading. Thank you to Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the advance reader copy.