Weights and measures form an essential part of our ingrained view of the world. It is just about impossible to function effectively without some internalized system of measurement. In this volume, I outline a history of the science of measurement, and the
It was not until 1971 that the authority for defining scientific units, the General Conference of Weights and Measures got around to defining the unit that is the basis of chemistry (the mole, or the quantity of something). Yet for all this tardiness in putting the chemical sciences on a sound quantitative basis, chemistry is an old and venerable subject and one naturally asks the question, why? Well, the truth is that up until the mid-1920s, many physicists did not believe in the reality of...
