CURVATURE

ZETETIC COSMOGONY:
OR
Conclusive Evidence
THAT THE WORLD IS NOT A
ROTATING—REVOLVING—GLOBE,
BUT
A STATIONARY PLANE CIRCLE.
By Thomas Winship
1899

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(Post 7/47)

CURVATURE.

In "Chambers' Mathematical Tables" the curvature of the globe is given as 7.935 inches to the mile, varying inversely as the square of the distance. If it be required to ascertain the curvature on a globe of 25,000 statute miles equatorial circumference, square the distance and multiply by 7.935 inches. The result is the curvature. Thus, in six miles there is a dip of nearly 24 feet; in 30 miles, nearly 600 feet; and so on.

In "Mensuration," by T. Baker, C.E., the correction for curvature is said to be 7.962 inches to the mile. These two equations so nearly agree, and amount to just about what the correction would be on a globe of the size the earth is said to be, that they may be taken as correct. If, therefore, the world we live on is a globe, it is a simple matter to find out how far any object at a given height can be seen.

In September, 1898, I received a letter from Australia, in which the writer says:

"In the year 1872 I was on board the ship 'Thomas Wood,' Capt. Gibson, from China to London. Owing to making a long passage, we ran short of provisions, and so short after rounding the Cape that the Captain spoke of putting into St. Helena for a supply. It was then my hobby to get the first glimpse of land, and in order to do this I would go up to the topgallant yard and make a survey, just as the sun would be rising. The island was clearly in view, well on the starboard bow. I reported this to Capt. Gibson. He disbelieved me, saying it was impossible, as we were 75 miles distant. He, however, offered me paper and pencil to sketch the land I saw. This I did. He then said, 'you are right,' and shaped his course accordingly. I had never seen the Island before, and could not have described the shape of it had I not seen it."

St. Helena is a high volcanic island, and if my informant had seen the top only, there would have to be an allowance made for the height of the land, but as he sketched the island, he must have seen the whole of it, which should have been 3,650 feet below the line of sight, if the world be a globe (deducting 100 feet for the height of the yard he viewed it from).

In "Chambers' Information for the People," section on Physical Geography, page 513, the following occurs:

"In North America, the basin or drainage of the Mississippi is estimated at 1,300,000 square miles, and that of the St. Lawrence at 600,000; while northward of the 50th parallel, extends an inhospitable flat of perhaps greater dimensions. . . . Next in order of importance is that section of Europe extending from the German Sea, through Prussia, Poland, and Russia, towards the Ural Mountains, presenting indifferently tracts of heath, sand and open pasture, and regarded by geographers as ONE VAST PLANE. So flat is the general profile of the region, that it has been remarked, IT IS POSSIBLE TO DRAW A LINE FROM LONDON TO MOSCOW, WHICH WOULD NOT PERCEPTIBLY VARY FROM A DEAD LEVEL."

The foregoing is a London-to-Moscow proof that the surface of the world is not globular. On a globe, no matter how powerful the glass, only a certain distance could be seen, as the roundness of the globe would prevent a glass from seeing round it, and its thickness would equally prevent one seeing through it. But in fine weather objects at distances out of all proportion to what the curvature would allow, are visible with the assistance of a good glass. The following from the "Voyage of a Naturalist," by C. Darwin, page 166, illustrates this point: "The guanaco, or wild llama.—Mr. Stokes told me that he one day saw, through a glass, a herd of these animals which evidently had been frightened, and were running away at full speed, although their distance was so great that he could not distinguish them with the naked eye."

From the "Atlas of Physical Geography," by the Rev. T. Milner, M.A., I extract the following:

"Vast areas exhibit a perfectly dead level, scarcely a rise existing through 1,500 miles from the Carpathians to the Urals, South of the Baltic the country is so flat that a prevailing north wind will drive the waters of the Stattiner Haf into the mouth of the Oder, and give the river a backward flow 30 or 40 miles." "The plains of Venezuela and New Granada, in South America, chiefly on the left of the Orinoco, are termed llanos, or level fields. Often in the space of 270 square miles THE SURFACE DOES NOT VARY A SINGLE FOOT." "The Amazon only falls 12 feet in the last 700 miles of its course; the La Plata has only a descent of one thirty-third of an inch a mile."

These extracts clearly prove that the surface of the earth is a level surface, and that, therefore, the world is not a globe. And when we come to consider the surface of the world under the sea, we shall find the same uniformity of evidence against the popular view. In "Nature and Man," by Professor W. B. Carpenter, article "The Deep Sea and its Contents," pages 320 and 321, the writer says:

"Nothing seems to have struck the "Challenger" surveyors more than the extraordinary FLATNESS (except in the neighbourhood of land) of that depressed portion of the earth's crust which forms the FLOOR OF THE GREAT OCEANIC AREA. . . . . If the bottom of mid-ocean were laid dry, an observer standing on any spot of it would find himself surrounded BY A PLAIN, only comparable to that of the North American prairies or the South American pampas. . . . . The form of the depressed area which lodges the water of the deep ocean is rather, indeed, to be likened to that of a FLAT WAITER or TEA TRAY, surrounded by an elevated and deeply-sloping rim, than to that of the basin with which it is commonly compared."

This remarkable writer tells of thousands of miles, in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the great Southern Ocean beds being a plane surface, and from his remarks it is clear that A FLAT SURFACE IS THE GENERAL CONTOUR OF THE BED OF THE GREAT OCEANS FOR TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SQUARE MILES.

BUILDINGS DON'T BEND BACKWARDS

AS THEY GO OVER HORIZON