James Vincent's Beyond Measure, a history of measurement, is out now.
It’s a truism that the phone in your pocket today is more powerful than the computer Nasa used to land humans on the moon in 1969. But the comparison isn’t as straightforward as it appears. First, raw power isn’t everything. Yes, your phone is speedier than the Apollo Guidance Computer – many millions of times faster – but Nasa’s machines were built with...
The flood of images is inescapable. Pick up your phone or surf the web and you will be immersed in pictures of war-torn cities and grinning politicians; friends’ holidays and strangers’ parties; heavenly salads and impish kittens. Yet despite their numbing infinite variety, these images all owe their sharpness and vibrancy to the legacy of a single photograph: a picture of...
The length of Christ was a spiritual matter in the Middle Ages. Sometimes referred to as the mensura Christi or longitudo Christi, it appeared in manuscripts as a hand-drawn bar or linea, as broad as the width of the page would allow. These lines could be measured by the faithful with a string or ribbon and multiplied so that they might draw the Son of God up to his full height. One...
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.