Robert J. Schadewald, The Plane Truth (e-book on cantab.net)

Visit: 2026-10-10 (STEP I run 1). Access: curl. Index: https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/ebooks/PlaneTruth/pages/ Chapters saved locally (research/pages/pt-*.htm; not for publication): Prologue, Chapters 1-9, Appendix B, Notes, References.

What it is

This is the posthumous e-book edition of Schadewald's history of the flat-earth movement, with a preface by Lois Schadewald [web: index]. Schadewald (d. 1999) was a science writer and a critic of the movement [memory: high]. The book is a secondary source written from a critical stance. It is the most detailed history found, with chapter-level references and a long bibliography (pt-References.htm). Chapter titles: 1 The Founding Father (Rowbotham); 2 Hampden and the Old Bedford Canal; 3 The Bedford Canal Swindle Detected and Exposed; 4 The Universal Zetetic Society; 5 Carpenter and the American Flat-Earth Movement; 6 Elsewhere Across the Plane; 7 Lady Blount and the Decline of British Flat-Earthism; 8 Voliva and Zion; 9 Johnson and Johnson: Two Witnesses. Appendices: The Flat-Earth Bible; the Fathers of the Church; Geocentricity [web].

Passages that bear on the claims (quoted briefly, with chapter URL)

Lady Blount's 1904 photographic test (claim 1) [web: Chapter_07.html]

• On 11 May 1904 Lady Blount returned to the Old Bedford Canal with "photographer E. Clifton and a camera equipped with a 5000 mm Dallmeyer telephoto lens". A white sheet 15 ft square hung from Old Bedford Bridge with its bottom just above the water, and Clifton went to Welney Bridge about six miles away.
• Clifton's letter to Lady Blount, as quoted by Schadewald, says that with a telescope 2 ft above the water he "could watch the fixing of the lower edge of the sheet". He also wrote: "I should not like to abandon the globular theory offhand ... (unless rays of light will travel in a curved path) these six miles of water present a level surface."
• Schadewald's own reading: Clifton's description of "an aqueous shimmering vapour" on the canal "suggests mirage". This is the historian's interpretation, not a measurement.
• Schadewald says Rowbotham, Carpenter and Naylor had also gone back to the same stretch after 1870 and made further experiments, "but these got little attention outside zetetic circles". Someone did new experiments in 1900-1901, which prompted H. Yule Oldham's BAAS paper of 17 September 1901 (cited in English Mechanic 80:256).
• Lady Blount edited the journal Earth "from at least January 1900 to November 1904".

Hampden after the wager (historical record) [web: Chapter_03.html]

• Schadewald says Hampden "remained in Chelmsford Gaol for six months before friends secured his release". In January 1876 Hampden sued Walsh, the stakeholder, under the Gaming Act 1845, and won back his £500 (quotes Cockburn C.J.). This agrees with the law report saved from WKU.
• Hampden's pamphlet Is Water Level or Convex After All? The Bedford Canal Swindle Detected and Exposed is attributed to him on style. Schadewald calls him "as hardnosed and mean-spirited a controversialist as ever hurled an epithet in lieu of an argument" (that is the critic's characterization).

Voliva (claims 3, 4, 5, 6) [web: Chapter_08.html]

• By 1922 Voliva had started radio station WCBD (5,000 watts). Schadewald says "He had a standing offer of $5,000 to anyone who could prove to him that the earth is a globe, and nobody ever collected."

Bearing

• Claim 1: it is a source for the 1904 Blount/Clifton photograph and the post-1870 zetetic repeats. Lady Blount's own published version was also found (see tfes-library note), and so was the 1904-05 English Mechanic correspondence (see hathitrust note).
• Claim 5 (agencies and concealment): nothing directly.
• Its reference list should be mined next run for primary items (Hampden's pamphlets, Earth Review, Earth, Voliva's Leaves of Healing).