Has anyone here done any reading on the Koreshan Community of the late 1800s? I find this particular account to be of interest.
"Previous experiments with the Illinois Drainage Canal in Chicago and on the shore of Lake Michigan encouraged Morrow to devise a method of measuring the curvature of the earth exemplified by the surface of a large body of water.
A straight, 4-mile, north-south beach near Naples provided a site for an ambitious experiment. He designed four "rectilineators" each precisely 12 feet long and perfectly square and level.
Teed commissioned the Pullman Railroad Car Company to build the mahogany and brass contraptions. One has survived is on display at the Koreshan State Park.
On the beach, Morrow bolted his rectilineators together and positioned them with a plumb bob and spirit level to furnish a reference.
Surveying data was computed each quarter-mile and compared to the water level of the Gulf of Mexico in caissons that dampened wave action.
If the beach were on the inside of a ball, the survey live would tend up. If the earth were round, the line would tend down.
The survey line tended down which inadvertently allowed Morrow to compute the correct circumference of the earth at 25,000 miles.
However, when Morrow corrected "human errors" in reading water levels in the caissons, he proved to his and Teed's satisfaction that we did, indeed, live inside a ball."
http://www.lindseywilliams.org/index.htm?LAL_Archives/Inside_-_Out_World_-_Koreshan_Unity_Community.htm~mainFrameDoes anyone have any other resources on these experiments? Any thoughts on what went wrong, and why it showed the earth was round? What were the corrections that were made to show the earth was concave?