Extracted text
Editorial transcription, lightly normalized from the scan. Line-break hyphenation, spacing, capitalization, and unmistakable OCR errors have been repaired; the claims remain those of The Flaming Sword.
Gravity and Geodetic Survey.
EDITOR FLAMING SWORD:—An astronomical friend of mine requested me to ask The Flaming Sword the following: "Can you start out 300 feet with the Rectilineator and come back on a triangle to the starting point?" My friend claims that while you can carry a straight line out and back for that distance, you cannot run a triangle. He claims that you would fall below the line every time. For my own part, I do not see what difference it would make. He says if you can convince him of that, he is willing to believe in the correctness of the Gulf survey. He also says that a line carried out as was the one you made, would always tend to lower on account of gravity. I cannot see it that way myself; I cannot see what gravity has to do with it in the least. The same reasoning would cause a bridge to sag and fall down. He was a student of Professor Swift. I can see only one answer to the question he has asked, and that is that you could do it in the same way that you surveyed a straight line out and back; but perhaps you will have a different answer.—Buffalo, N. Y.
If all the objections against the Koreshan Geodetic Survey on the Gulf Coast of Florida, urged by scientific men and others during the past five years, were collated and published, they would form a volume. The criticisms are remarkable, not because they are numerous or even weighty, but because they are so strikingly contradictory. It would indeed be miraculous if all the things which have been pointed out to us, should have conspired to produce the results of the first attempt to determine by direct means the actual contour of the earth. All the conflicting criticisms go to show that the opposition has no scientific ground of attack on Koreshan Science and its demonstrations.
For instance; if gravity were the cause of the air line extending into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico at about four miles from the starting-point, then objections which have taxed the mental power of many opponents to originate—such objections as that we manipulated the apparatus to cause the line to "run down;" that a mistake was made in leveling at the beginning; that the apparatus was constructed to run a curved line; that the adjustments of the sections were not accurately made; that we purposely inclined the first section, and that we falsified the facts—must be set aside as vain attempts to explain away our survey.
If gravity caused our surveyed line to go down to meet the earth in about four miles from the starting-point, we were singularly favored with a descent at a ratio which conforms approximately to the calculated ratio of the earth's concave curvature. From beginning to end of the survey, the distance between the surveyed line and the datum line—the mean tide level—was what it should be between a rectiline extended over a concavity of 25,000 miles circumference. Gravity is as inadequate to explain the ratio of approach of the earth and the surveyed line, as any of the other so called points made by those who have adversely considered our work. It is not enough to urge mere contingencies. There is but one thing that would produce the results obtained—and that is the concavity of the earth itself!
We are asked if we could start out 300 feet with our apparatus, and come back on a triangle to the starting-point. We have never made such a test of the instrument; it was sufficient to return over the same ground in a trial survey of nearly 300 feet, to the exact point whence we started; but if we had made forward and back lines form a triangle, the result would have been the same, for the simple reason that the lines would necessarily have been in the same plane by virtue of the principles of the apparatus which made the return line in the test survey coincidental with the forward one. If gravity would cause a downward tendency of such a line in the survey of a triangle, the tendency would be the same in running back and forth; and on the basis of such a supposition, instead of striking the same point, as we did, the return line should have fallen below the starting-point. There is no escape from this conclusion.
Of course, in the above it is understood that the triangle should be surveyed in the same way that we surveyed the trial line to and fro—that is, by surveying out and back by simple adjustment of the right-angles, leveling only at the starting-point. There is a way, however, of surveying a triangle with the Rectilineator, in which the point of return would be below the line at the initial point. This, if correctly conducted, would as effectually demonstrate the earth's concavity as did the survey we made on the Gulf Coast.
Suppose we lay out an equilateral triangle whose sides are each one mile in length. The three points or angles we may designate as A, B, and C, respectively. Start line AB at A at right-angles to the perpendicular; at B, AB would be 8 inches nearer the earth or the datum line than at A. At B begin the line at same altitude as the end of AB, making the line at right-angles to the perpendicular at B. BC would likewise approach the earth 8 inches at C. Repeat the process in surveying CA, and upon return to A, the median line of the apparatus would be 24 inches below the starting-point at A—and this would result, not because gravity could change the direction of the line, but because the earth is concave.
If, however, we should survey a triangle of same size as above, with a transit instrument, leveling the instrument at each angle, and taking sights one mile in length, line CA at A would be about 18 inches above line AB at A—and this would be due, not to the earth's convexity, but to those illusive factors of perspective foreshortening and visual curvilineation which the modern astronomer and geodesist fail to take into consideration. The Rectilineator was invented and applied for the purpose of obviating refraction of the surveyed line, and to avoid the illusions of foreshortening; and by means of application of the principles involved, we purpose revolutionizing geodesy and thus leave the modern scientists without an avenue of escape from the conclusion that we live within a hollow globe about 8,000 miles in diameter.
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The source scans remain the record. This page preserves the periodical's argument and reported observations without presenting its conclusions as independently established results. The claims remain attributed to The Flaming Sword.
The Flaming Sword · Vol. 16, No. 38 · 8 Aug 1902 · PDF p. 13