Round Earth theory history: How we measured our planet

Sir Isaac Newton's laws explained many things - the slosh and roll of ocean tides, the motions of planets, why cannonballs trace a particular trajectory before thudding back to the ground, why we aren't flung into space as the planet spins beneath us at hundreds of kilometers per hour (how fast you are spinning depends on where you are. The speed of Earth's spin varies from over 1600 km per hour at the equator to zero at the poles). But one of his theories became almost immediately controversial.

That was the suggestion that our planet is not a perfect sphere.

According to Newton's theory, the centrifugal force of Earth's spin should result in a slight flattening at the poles and a bulging at the equator, which would make the planet more of an oval sphere than a perfect sphere. That meant the length of a degree of meridian wouldn't be the same in Italy as it is in Scotland. Specifically, the length would shorten as you moved away from the poles. This, of course, was not good news for people whose measurements of the planet were based on the assumption that Earth is a perfect sphere, which was everyone at the time.

For half a century people had been trying to work out the size of Earth, mostly by making very exacting measurements. One of such attempts was by an English mathematician named Richard Norwood. As a young man Norwood had traveled to Bermuda with a diving bell modeled on Halley's diving device, intending to make a fortune scooping pearls from the seabed. The scheme failed because there was no pearls and Norwood's diving device didn't work, but Norwood was not one to waste an experience. In the early 17th century Bermuda was well known among ships' captains for being hard to locate. The problem was that the ocean was vast, Bermuda was small and the navigational tools for dealing with this disparity hopelessly inadequate. There wasn't even an agreed length for a nautical mile. Over the breadth of an ocean the smallest miscalculations would become magnified so that ships often missed Bermuda sized targets by dismayingly large margins. Norwood, whose passion was trigonometry and thus angles, decided to bring a little mathematical rigor to navigation, and to that end he decided to calculate the length of a degree on Earth's surface.

Starting with his back against the Tower of London, Norwood spent 2 devoted years marching 208 miles north to York, repeatedly stretching and measuring a length of chain as he went, all the while making the most meticulous adjustments for the rise and fall of the landscape and the meanderings of the road. The final step was to measure the angle of the sun at York at the same time of day and on the same day of the year as he had made his first measurement in London. From this, he reasoned that he could accurately estimate the length of one degree of Earth's meridian and thus calculate the whole distance. It was an almost ludicrously ambitious undertaking. A mistake of the slightest fraction of a degree would throw the whole math out by miles, but in fact as Norwood proudly declaimed, he was accurate to "within a scantling", or more precisely, to within about 600 yards. In metric terms, his math worked out at 110.72 km per degree of arc.

In 1637, Norwood's masterwork of navigation, The Seamen's Practice, was published and found an immediate following. It went through 17 editions and was still in print 25 years after his death.

Meanwhile, the momentum for determining the Earth's circumference passed to France. There, the astronomer Jean Piccard devised an impressively complicated method of triangulation involving quadrants, pendulum clocks, zenith sectors and telescopes (for observing the motions of the moons of Jupiter). After two years of trundling and triangulating his way across France, in 1669 he announced a more accurate measure of 110.46 km for one degree of arc. This was a great source of pride for the French but it was predicated on the assumption that the Earth was a perfect sphere, which Newton now said it was not.

To complicate matters, after Picard's death the father and son team of Giovanni and Jacques Cassini repeated Picard's experiments over a larger area and came up with the results that suggested the Earth was fatter not at the equator but at the poles - that Newton, in other words, was exactly wrong. It was this that prompted the Academy of Sciences to dispatch Bouguer and La Condamine to South America to take the new measurements. They chose the Andes mountains of South America because they needed to measure near the equator, to determine if there really was a difference in a sphericity there, and because they reasoned that mountains would give hem good sight lines. A second French team was also dispatched to northern Scandinavia, and found that a degree was in fact longer near the poles, as Newton had predicted. The Earth was 43 km stouter when measured at the equator than when measured from top to bottom around the poles. The South American team confirmed this finding with their own measurements at the Andes.

there is no way any FE'er fill accept
the word of the man who invented calculus

voice, Newton did not invent anything, especially calculus or the three laws of mechanics ascribed to him. I have done my homework, have you?

How Newton copied his three laws of mechanics from Naya Vaisesika Sutra:

http://theflatearthsociety.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=696

Both Newton and Leibnitz copied EVERYTHING (calculus, geometry) from the school of Kerala (Galileo Galilei, the Bernoulli brothers, Sterling, even most of Euler's results, were copied from the indian school of mathematics), see the above link for the complete demonstration.

Richard Norwood was closely associated with London Royal Society through Boyle and Oldenburg; LRS promoted the false concept of attractive gravity after Newton's death and the round earth fantasy.

Jean Picard was the student of Pierre Gassendi, a well-known mystical philosopher with links to M. Mersenne.

voice, Newton did not invent anything, especially calculus or the three laws of mechanics ascribed to him. I have done my homework, have you?

How Newton copied his three laws of mechanics from Naya Vaisesika Sutra:

http://theflatearthsociety.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=696

Both Newton and Leibnitz copied EVERYTHING (calculus, geometry) from the school of Kerala (Galileo Galilei, the Bernoulli brothers, Sterling, even most of Euler's results, were copied from the indian school of mathematics), see the above link for the complete demonstration.

Richard Norwood was closely associated with London Royal Society through Boyle and Oldenburg; LRS promoted the false concept of attractive gravity after Newton's death and the round earth fantasy.

Jean Picard was the student of Pierre Gassendi, a well-known mystical philosopher with links to M. Mersenne.

And your point being?

It doesn't disprove their findings and measurement of the planet's degree of arc, which proves that the world is a sphere.

Perhaps to prove your flat earth theory, you should spend 2 years of your life triangulating across the globe proving that there is no arc at all.

voice, Newton did not invent anything, especially calculus or the three laws of mechanics ascribed to him. I have done my homework, have you?

How Newton copied his three laws of mechanics from Naya Vaisesika Sutra:

http://theflatearthsociety.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=696

Both Newton and Leibnitz copied EVERYTHING (calculus, geometry) from the school of Kerala (Galileo Galilei, the Bernoulli brothers, Sterling, even most of Euler's results, were copied from the indian school of mathematics), see the above link for the complete demonstration.

Richard Norwood was closely associated with London Royal Society through Boyle and Oldenburg; LRS promoted the false concept of attractive gravity after Newton's death and the round earth fantasy.

Jean Picard was the student of Pierre Gassendi, a well-known mystical philosopher with links to M. Mersenne.

If only I could pull some strings to get the peeps at University to come here.

Now that would be fun. sort of like an academic Inglorious Bastards

Problem is, you'd just get laughed at. Bastards. If they actually did measure it, the government would just kill them all to keep them from publishing the results.

And your point being?

It doesn't disprove their findings and measurement of the planet's degree of arc, which proves that the world is a sphere.

Perhaps to prove your flat earth theory, you should spend 2 years of your life triangulating across the globe proving that there is no arc at all.

Trollbrot ist Trolltod

Futtern nur am Futterplatz Trollhaus.

voice, Newton did not invent anything, especially calculus or the three laws of mechanics ascribed to him. I have done my homework, have you?

How Newton copied his three laws of mechanics from Naya Vaisesika Sutra:

http://theflatearthsociety.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=696

Yeah.

Despite what I just said I looked into the Naya and Vaisesika Sutra thing.

As expected it's all utter horse manure.

Eg,

Here's what Levee claims (by proxy from some wacko site)

In the absence of all other forces (saMyoga-bindings) gravity exists. V.S 5.1.7

Here's what VS 5.1.7 actually says:

7. Impurity (lies) in killing.

And again...

In the absence of a force, a particle of matter experiences no change. V.S 1.1.6

When in reality V.S 1.1.6 is...

6. Attributes are color, taste, smell, and touch, numbers, measures, separateness, conjunction and disjunction, priority and posteriority, understandings, pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, and volitions.

See?

http://www.aspiringindia.org/darshanas/vaisesika/vaisesikasutra
http://www.aspiringindia.org/darshanas/nyaya/nyayasutra

Quote from: wow on September 27, 2009, 12:50:36 PM

And your point being?

It doesn't disprove their findings and measurement of the planet's degree of arc, which proves that the world is a sphere.

Perhaps to prove your flat earth theory, you should spend 2 years of your life triangulating across the globe proving that there is no arc at all.

Trollbrot ist Trolltod

Futtern nur am Futterplatz Trollhaus.

Do you need another suspension to get it through your head that this sort of nonsense is not welcome in the upper forums?

crustpuffinator, you have been handling manure for too long, it seems...here is the real deal for you:

That site actually includes the translation from sanskrit, do not try to fake your way through the discussion.

Do you understand what we are discussing here? Newton actually copied everything (mathematics, mechanics) from that work, can you not recognize his so called three laws? He copied them without even verifying these laws...Newton never mentions attractive gravity, did you know this much?


wow, here are your arcs of the spherical earth: they measure an absolute zero over distances, where, according to your theory, we should have clear cut curvatures:

Port Credit - Toronto 14.5 km, with a completely missing curvature of 4 meters, no ascending slope, just a completely flat surface of the water:











Let us increase the distance to 33.6 km, zero curvature (supposed to be 22 meters), Oakville - Toronto:



What did you say about arcs my friend?

Etobicoke - Toronto, 9.6 km, with a missing curvature of 1.8 meters, no ascending slope, no midpoint visual obstacle:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eskimo_jo/508992681/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/meanman94/2220531312/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhembach/2955330790/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/smaku/112746770/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/smaku/114828557/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/smaku/112244818/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/jany/2402347338/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/etobicokesouth/27432050/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/meanman94/1492421330/




Now, let us increase the distance to 55 km - Hamilton - Toronto lakeshore west condominiums:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetrick/487755017/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/planetrick/487726854/in/photostream/





The visual obstacle over that 55 km distance measures 195 meters, no such thing there, just a completely flat surface of the water.

You know what pains me the most?

If the pictures DID show curvature, you'd blame the lens.

levee, you really are a bit of a plonker. Oh, by the way, you forgot to mention Tunguska in that post.

 

Levee, as you have clearly gone to a great deal of effort to organise all that picspam, it pains me to point out that all your pictures of Toronto fail totally as evidence as one can't tell if what we're seeing on the edge of the shore there is all there is, or whether there's more shore that isn't visible. But because we can't see it, we don't know if it's there or not!
Additionally, a couple of your pictures show what looks like streetlights seeming to be more or less at water level rather than at height. This is evidence against what you are claiming, not for it. Many pictures are so low res that you can't see enough detail at the water edge.

Hey levee, how do you explain the missing yacht hull in this photo?

Levee, as you have clearly gone to a great deal of effort to organise all that picspam, it pains me to point out that all your pictures of Toronto fail totally as evidence as one can't tell if what we're seeing on the edge of the shore there is all there is, or whether there's more shore that isn't visible. But because we can't see it, we don't know if it's there or not!
Additionally, a couple of your pictures show what looks like streetlights seeming to be more or less at water level rather than at height. This is evidence against what you are claiming, not for it. Many pictures are so low res that you can't see enough detail at the water edge.

Yeah what he said.

crustpuffinator, you have been handling manure for too long, it seems...here is the real deal for you:

That site actually includes the translation from sanskrit, do not try to fake your way through the discussion.

And I linked to a site that had the genuine translations.

The translations are nothing like what your source (Abovetopsecret.com a conspiracy website) claims they are.

I feel embarrassed for you.

@squat

Obviously when you take the picture from a lower altitude, things happen.

@squat

Obviously when you take the picture from a lower altitude, things happen.

I know full well why what is observed in that photo happens.

squat...listen butterball...you have shown yourself to be just a dope, with a mediocre belief in the round earth system...how dumb or brainless do you have to be, to believe that 1000 trillion billion liters of water can stay ''glued" right next to the surface of a sphere, using a nonexistent attractive gravitation? How dumb can you be, since you have at your disposal the trajectories of the clouds which categorically and immediately contradict the theory which tells us that the Earth rotates around its own axis.

Both R. Norwood and J. Picard lied their butts off about the arcs they supposedly discovered; they only had to investigate any possible curvature across the English Channel...there ain't any...no curvature whatsoever over a distance of 34 km...



h = 3 m   BD = 60.6
h = 5 m   BD = 53
h = 10m  BD = 40.4
h = 20m  BD = 25.5

Even if we go to a height of 20 m (but the picture was taken well below that, we on the beach of Cap Gris Nez), we should have seen an ascending slope, and a midpoint obstacle of 22.4 meters; no such thing exists there.

Here are photographs of the White Cliffs of Dover, so that you can see what they look like:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apeofjungle/2145058531/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orodreth_au/1472106076/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/big-e-mr-g/129592362/


Now, the best photographs ever taken of the English Channel, we are located RIGHT ON THE CAP GRIS NEZ BEACH:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9979943/Dove-Dover

The photographers right there, preparing to take the second shot, called Shipspotting:



And now the ship being spotted:



A completely flat surface of the water, with the White Dover Cliffs seen in their entirety; no ascending slope, no midpoint curvature of 22.6 meters, no visual obstacle of 65 meters.


Let us now go over to the other side of the Atlantic, to the Big Apple.

SANDY HOOK - CONEY ISLAND

DISTANCE 7 MILES, 11.2 KM

CURVATURE 2.4 METERS

On a round earth, we should see a rising slope, with a midpoint visual obstacle of 2.4 meters, but there is no such thing in these photos taken right on the Sandy Hook beach:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23956233@N04/2890814609/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23956233@N04/2891651706/in/photostream/


This is what Beamer Falls looks like, approximately 45 meters in height:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/160/343037881_497327a9d6_o.jpg

And now, one of the most fantastic photographs taken from Grimsby, right from the Beamer Falls Conservation Area:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/suckamc/53037827/

One of the best proofs that there is no curvature over lake Ontario; from 45 meters, we need another 10 meters just to reach the top of the curvature, right in front of you, and then miss the bottom 65 meters of the buildings in Toronto (the visual obstacle). But there is no curvature, no midpoint 55 meter obstacle, the Toronto downtown buildings visible top to bottom.

My friends, do you like to be taken for dummies? Have you lost your minds to believe in a round earth fantasy which no scientific proof behind it? Look carefully at these pictures, they tell the story better than anything else.

thermalddt, don't try this stuff with me here...most photographs from Port Credit/Etobicoke are taken right from the beach itself, no ascending slope, no midpoint obstacle; the photographs from Hamilton are taken right there on the beach, no 195 visual obstacle, just a completely straight surface of the water.

Photos cannot be used for evidence (even ones that seem to contradict what you're saying...lols).

Photos cannot be used for evidence (even ones that seem to contradict what you're saying...lols).

I don't mind the use of photos as evidence, only that none of those photos have the least bit of documentation to support any theory.

Here are photographs of the White Cliffs of Dover, so that you can see what they look like:

I know perfectly well what the white cliffs of Dover look like - I was born in the town. My sisters still live there. I can also tell you that from the beach at Dover, either from Shakespeare beach or from east of the harbour (when the tide is out), you cannot see the beach at Cap Griz Nez. For sure you can see the cliffs but you can't see anything at sea level. You can stand on the beach at Dover, to the west of the harbour and see the sails of sailing boats but you can't see the hulls. Why is that?

Problem is, you'd just get laughed at. Bastards. If they actually did measure it, the government would just kill them all to keep them from publishing the results.

How can you be certain if no one has tried?  I think us FE'rs are spineless.  Come on people! Let's bust out our compasses, astrolabes, and other surveying tools to get some straight up factual science!  If everything we've been given is a lie, let's find some truth ourselves instead of whining about how it's all a plot.

Quote from: levee on September 29, 2009, 12:51:54 AM

Here are photographs of the White Cliffs of Dover, so that you can see what they look like:

I know perfectly well what the white cliffs of Dover look like - I was born in the town. My sisters still live there. I can also tell you that from the beach at Dover, either from Shakespeare beach or from east of the harbour (when the tide is out), you cannot see the beach at Cap Griz Nez. For sure you can see the cliffs but you can't see anything at sea level. You can stand on the beach at Dover, to the west of the harbour and see the sails of sailing boats but you can't see the hulls. Why is that?

Then it should pretty easy for you to actually videotape the view across the Channel; or at least take some good photographs.

Here are some more photos, which show there is no curvature across that Channel:



From about 90 meters, from those white cliffs, you could barely see the first pebble on the French beach...but we can see clearly everything with no curvature in sight...


http://www.flickr.com/photos/9550033@N04/3910410228/ (copyright marthaindigo)

Quote from: Pcoff on September 27, 2009, 02:41:50 PM

Problem is, you'd just get laughed at. Bastards. If they actually did measure it, the government would just kill them all to keep them from publishing the results.

How can you be certain if no one has tried?  I think us FE'rs are spineless.  Come on people! Let's bust out our compasses, astrolabes, and other surveying tools to get some straight up factual science!  If everything we've been given is a lie, let's find some truth ourselves instead of whining about how it's all a plot.

I have been trying to pass this thought to all the FES members; some of us live in Europe, close to the English Channel, or to the Strait of Gibraltar; some live close to Lake Ontario; the FES could purchase a reflector telescope, with donations (5 euros each) from each of the members, or even rent such equipment, and pass it along to photograph these landscapes; one could even envision a purchase of some good quality video equipment, to actully videotape the view across the English Channel.

Then it should pretty easy for you to actually videotape the view across the Channel; or at least take some good photographs.

Here are some more photos, which show there is no curvature across that Channel:

I said I was born there, I don't live there now. Those pictures are obviously taken from the cliff tops so what do you expect to see?

In both photos you can see Dover but where are the piers and breakwater? I can't see them.

 

thermalddt, don't try this stuff with me here...most photographs from Port Credit/Etobicoke are taken right from the beach itself, no ascending slope, no midpoint obstacle; the photographs from Hamilton are taken right there on the beach, no 195 visual obstacle, just a completely straight surface of the water.

You are spouting nonsense. You claim that the picture of the photographers taking the ship photos are "right on the beach": no they aren't. Anyone with eyes can see that they are on a vantage point considerably higher than "right on the beach" - just look at the waves below them. Secondly, the point I made about the Toronto photos still stands - you can't tell if any of the cliff bottom in that view is being cut off or not. Thirdly, if you are going to be arrogant enough to say "don't try this stuff with me" - I can only assume you don't like how I have been able to crush your argument in such brief posts, while you type ten times more than I do.

Also, I hate to say that tom bishop posted a great link about barrel distortion from camera lenses.

Problem is, you'd just get laughed at. Bastards. If they actually did measure it, the government would just kill them all to keep them from publishing the results.

Because the "government" would so be in on that, right? I mean, you totally need to go through the government to publish something, correct?