Subscribe now

The Tale of the Scale by Solly Angel, Oxford University Press, $28, ISBN 0195158687 Reviewed by Roy Herbert

JET-LAGGED, Solly Angel sat in his hotel room in Bangkok and stared at the bathroom scales. They seemed to him a thing of no elegance – clumsy, inaccurate. Surely they could be improved. They could be beautiful, slim and precise, an instrument anyone would be proud to own and, furthermore, portable. In Hollywood, what followed would have been called A Lone Man’s Battle to Make His Dream Come True.

Angel, an authority on urban planning, had no idea how scales worked. The rest…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

Sign up

To continue reading, subscribe today with our introductory offers

Popular articles

Trending New Scientist articles

Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop