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Topics - Rayzor

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Flat Earth Community / TFES Wiki says the earth's surface is curved.
« on: January 17, 2016, 04:43:16 AM »
I know this is an oversight,  or a misunderstanding,  but I congratulate the wiki authors on being honest enough to leave the reference as is.
I mentioned it  months ago  on the other forum,  but  never really got much traction.  It came up again when someone recently mentioned the Bedford Level Experiment,  which is well known for proving the earth is a globe,  and was the subject of much debate in the late 1800's..   Time to ask the question again.

Let's refer to the wiki...  The Bedford Level Experiment  http://wiki.tfes.org/Bedford_Level_Experiment

Where we find the following.

History
Diagrams explaining the experiment as documented in Earth Not a Globe by Rowbotham
The first investigation was carried out by Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884), the president of the Flat Earth Society, in the summer of 1838. He waded into the river and used a telescope held eight inches above the water to watch a boat with a five-foot mast row slowly away from him. He reported that the vessel remained constantly in his view for the full six miles to Welney bridge, whereas, had the water surface been curved with the accepted circumference of a spherical earth, the top of the mast should have been some eleven feet below his line of sight.
Rowbotham repeated his experiments several times over the years but his discoveries received little attention until, in 1870, a supporter by the name of John Hampden offered a wager that he could show, by repeating Rowbotham's experiment, that the earth was flat. The noted naturalist and qualified surveyor Alfred Russel Wallace accepted the wager. Wallace won the bet. Hampden, however, published a pamphlet alleging that Wallace had cheated and sued for his money. Several protracted court cases ensued, with the result that Hampden was imprisoned for libel, but the court also determined that Wallace had, indeed, cheated.

In 1901 Henry Yule Oldham, a geography reader at King's College, Cambridge, conducted the definitive experiment described above.

On 11 May 1904 Lady Anne Blount hired a commercial photographer to use a telephoto lens camera to take a picture from Welney of a large white sheet she had placed, touching the surface of the river, at Rowbotham's original position six miles away. The photographer, Edgar Clifton from Dallmeyer's studio, mounted his camera two feet above the water at Welney and was surprised to be able to obtain a picture of the target, which should have been invisible to him given the low mounting point of the camera. Lady Blount published the pictures far and wide and, apart from some hypothesising concerning refraction, and dark hints of collusion between Blount and Clifton, these have not been explained.


So the wiki says the definitive experiment was carried out by Henry Yule Oldham in 1901... 

In 1901 Oldham used a plate camera and theodolite for his careful observations along the length of the river and he presented his results at an illustrated lecture held at the British Association for the Advancement of Science.[5][6] His experiment, because of its photographic proof, is regarded as definitive and was taught in schools[7] until images taken from orbiting satellites became available.

Henry Yule Oldham published his results in the following paper..

Oldham, H. Yule (1901). "The experimental demonstration of the curvature of the Earth's surface". Annual Report (London: British Association for the Advancement of Science): 725–6.

I appreciate the honest reporting in the wiki,   can we now consider the Bedford Level Experiment as proving the earth is in fact a globe.


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