Chapter · Ecuador · History
The country named after a line
From a ten-year French expedition to a lost border
In 1735 Louis XV sent scholars to measure a degree of meridian at the equator, to settle an argument: is the Earth flattened at the poles or swollen at the middle? They took ten years, left dead behind them, and the country kept the name of the line they came to measure. This path starts there, and works back to what came before.
Context first
A lesson to read before the others, to set the scene.
- The place
- The era
- The people
The lessons in this chapter
- 1Ten years to measure a lineTen years, very little of it spent measuring. Clouds, exhausted finances, a lawsuit, and a surgeon killed in a bullring before two or three thousand witnesses, whom the narrator takes care to count.9 min
- 2How you measure the Earth with a ropeYou only measure the Earth in one place: a twelve-kilometre baseline paced on the ground. Everything else comes from angles, and a second baseline three hundred kilometres away tells you whether you went wrong.9 min
- 3Two pyramids pulled down over a flowerTwo monuments raised so the measurement could be redone, and destroyed over a fleur-de-lys and two forgotten names. La Condamine won his case in 1742, and learned too late: even the ruins have perished.9 min
How these lessons are written
Each lesson starts from first-hand sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives, museums and institutes. A fact without a source does not get written, and every lesson lists its own as direct links.
The rhythm
A lesson is five minutes of cards and four questions. Those questions then come back the next day, then at 3, 7, 21 and 60 days, and that return is what makes it stick. One a day is enough, and you can do several in a row.