Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of DemocracyThe epic story of how the gigantic land of America acquired its unique shape across 3000 miles of territory, and how the largest land survey in history paved the way both for a colossal sale of property and for the embedding of democracy and the spirit of independence in the psyche of Americans. |
Contents
The Invention of Property | 1 |
Precise Confusion | 15 |
A Hunger for Land | 24 |
Copyright | |
17 other sections not shown
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Measuring America: How the United States was Shaped by the Greatest Land ... Andro Linklater No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Académie accuracy acquire American boundary Britain British bushel Carolina century claims coast colonies committee Congress created decimal decimalised divided Dombey's England English established exact farmers farms feet Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler feudal France French frontier gallon George Washington grid Gunter's chain Hassler House hundred inches Indians John Joseph Dombey kilogram land survey length London ment metes and bounds metre metric system miles million acres Mississippi National needed Ohio Ohio river ownership plats pounds prairie Principal Meridian public land purchase railroad river Robert Royal Rufus Putnam scientific scientists second's pendulum sell settlers sold Spanish speculators square squatters standards surveyors system of weights territory theodolite Thomas Hutchins thousand toise took township treaty triangulation United States's Virginia weights and measures western Western Confederacy William wrote yard York