Weighing the World is a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the scientific events leading to modern map making, written by one of the world's master surveyors. Edwin Danson, using a similar approach to his earlier best seller, "Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Important Border in America" (Wiley, 2000) takes us on a journey telling the story of this experiment that has not been written about in over two hundred years. National jealousies, commercial and political rivalry were the underlying causes for many of the eighteenth century's wars but war also provided...

At the start of the 18th century there were no maps, anywhere in the world. No one knew, with any certainty, the shape of the earth or what lay beneath its surface. Was it hollow or solid? Were the Andes the highest mountains on the Earth or was it the peak of Tenerife? Was the Earth a perfect sphere or slightly squashed as Sir Isaac Newton prophesized? In Weighing the World, master-surveyor and bestselling author Edwin Danson presents the stories of the scientists and scholars who cut their way through jungles, crossed the artic tundra, and braved the world's highest mountains to...

The second edition of Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America updates Edwin Danson's definitive history of the creation of the Mason - Dixon Line to reflect new research and archival documents that have come to light in recent years.

• Features numerous updates and revisions reflecting new information that has come to light on surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon
• Reveals the true origin of the survey's starting point and the actual location of the surveyors' observatory in Embreeville
• Offers expanded...