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.
Open Court of Inquiry.
THE EDITOR.
PROVING THE EARTH ROUND.
"I copied the enclosed from a printed article in a recent issue of the National Geographic Magazine, of Washington, D. C. Thinking possibly you had not seen it, and believing it might be of passing interest at least, I am taking the liberty of troubling you with it. Unfortunately, however, I have not secured copies of the writer's outline diagrams, which may prevent satisfactory interpretation of his theory."
THE ARTICLE referred to is headed with the words, "A Simple Method of Proving that the Earth is Round," written by Professor Brown, of Worcester, Mass. The experiments described were conducted by the author of the article, with illustrations by means of diagrams.
On Lake Quinsigamond he found a straight reach of about a mile and three quarters; and over that short distance he sighted objects through a telescope, two inches in diameter. The National Geographic Magazine has given the experiment prominence and importance in its pages.
The experimenter placed a target on the Lake, so that its center was about four feet above the water. About half way between the point of observation and the target, a horizontal bar was placed, as far above the water as the center of the target. Then, at the point of observation, the axis of the telescope was placed at the same elevation. The bar, in the telescopic field, appeared a little above the center of the target.
This is nothing new to us. We accept the facts of the experiment as given; and we hold that the facts are as they should be from the concave surface of the water over which the experiment was conducted.
That experiment and similar ones, as well as all facts of astronomical observation and geodetic survey, prove that the earth is round; that it is in reality a sphere about 8,000 miles in diameter, curving from a tangent line at about eight inches to the mile. But the facts do not prove that the surface on which we live is convex. We hold that the earth is round like a hollow ball, the habitable surface being on the inside. The various phenomena observable, falsely interpreted from the basis of a fallacious system of optics and physics, seem to support the convex idea, because that idea is founded upon deceptive appearances.
Experiments conducted by the Koreshan Geodetic Staff are altogether more direct and positive in their testimony concerning the shape of the earth, than such an experiment described in the article. On the Drainage Canal, Chicago, we placed a target about two by three feet, on the water; and from a point five miles distant, with the telescope only six inches above the water, we saw every square inch of the surface of the target. A similar experiment was performed on the Bay of Naples, Florida, in 1897, and numerous other experiments on different bodies of water, with similar results.
Professor Marshall became interested in such experiments through the mere suggestion that Mr. H. Yule Oldham performed some experiments on the Bedford Level, England. Mr. Oldham employed a large telescopic camera, and took a photograph of targets arranged at equal heights above the water. Afterward, the same camera, in the hands of the same photographer, took a picture of a target placed on the water at a point six miles from the camera, which was also as near the surface of the water as possible.
Dr. Rowbotham, known as "Parallax," conducted numerous experiments on the Old Bedford Level from 1839 to 1870. His tests were on the surface of the water, not some distance above it. In 1870 Dr. Wallace, the famous naturalist, became involved in a discussion with John Hampton, a follower of Parallax; and the issue was subjected to test by viewing targets 13 ft. above the canal for a distance of six miles. The middle stake or target appeared to be the higher. Afterward, Parallax, with a company of gentlemen, conducted experiments on the water, over which targets were visible through a telescope on the water, the target being six miles away.
We do not hold that these experiments conflict at all; but that in the space of the air above the water, say several feet, the perspective and foreshortening effects make it inevitable that the farther target or stake appears the shorter or lower. Convexity has nothing at all to do with it because the convexity does not exist on the surface of any body of water in the world. Viewed over considerable distance, on the water, the target, under conditions of a very clear atmosphere, speaks with emphasis against the supposition that the earth is a convex surface.
The most direct test of the earth's surface ever conducted, and the only one of the kind so far, was the Koreshan Geodetic Survey on the Florida West Coast, in 1897; in which test, not lines of vision were employed, but a mechanical line not subject to refractive effects of the atmosphere and the curvilinear effects of the operation of the principles of perspective and geo-linear foreshortening.
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