Flat-Earth: Investigator sites log

Run 1: 2026-10-10 (STEP I, first run)

Web time used: about 9.5 minutes (570 s by date +%s, from the first search to the last fetch). Time cap 10 min; not a deep dive. Chrome was the browser (own tab, closed at the end); curl was used for pages that allow scripted access, and yt-dlp for YouTube captions. Scope: first run, so there was no recheck. New sites were chosen from the four priorities, with weight on the primary record of the 1870 wager and the 1904 Blount test (claim 1), the Koreshan survey archive, the Voliva press record and Skiba's balloon test.

Keywords tried

Run 1 (2026-10-10): - "Hampden v. Walsh" 1876 wager Queen's Bench law report - "Lady Blount" 1904 Bedford canal photograph Clifton telephoto "English Mechanic" - Koreshan Geodetic Survey 1897 rectilineator Naples archive "Koreshan Unity" papers collection - Chronicling America: voliva flat earth - Rob Skiba high altitude balloon 2017 footage results "Skiba" balloon launch Hummer Brewer - "Rowbotham" "Parallax" lecture 1860s newspaper "Earth not a Globe" Bedford canal 1838 "Zetetic" archive.org - Internet Archive: creator:(Rowbotham) OR title:(zetetic astronomy); title:(earth not a globe); title:("flat earth") AND date:[1800-01-01 TO 1950-12-31]; title:(Voliva) OR creator:(Voliva); Hampden AND (Wallace OR globe) AND date:[1860-01-01 TO 1900-12-31] - Hewitson diaries "Parallax" lecture Preston "earth not a globe" oapen - "Manea Fen" Rowbotham 1838 Bedford canal community Hodson "Working Bee" - site:ousewashes.info flat earth experiments Rowbotham - Old Bailey API: Hampden Wallace - "John Hampden" libel Wallace "Old Bailey" OR "Central Criminal Court" 1871 "flat" - Wayback CDX: testingtheglobe.com* - Voliva $5,000 challenge prove earth round 1931 "Modern Mechanix" OR "Zion" WCBD radio flat - Chicago skyline seen from Michigan Grand Mere 2015 Nowicki photograph superior mirage looming refraction distance - Internet Archive: title:(english mechanic) AND (date:[1904 TO 1905] OR volume:80); "english mechanic and world of science" AND (80 OR 1904) - HathiTrust full text: "Lady Blount" Bedford Clifton; "Bedford Canal" "Lady Blount" photograph; in-volume Blount - "The Field" "19 March 1870" OR "26 March 1870" Walsh umpire decision Wallace Hampden convexity of water - Epsilon: Hampden flat - "Universal Zetetic Society" records archive OR papers Blount "Earth Review" library holdings - "Flat or Spherical?" Blount magazine 1904 OR 1905 zetetic - site:library.tfes.org Blount OR Zetetic OR Hampden - "Samuel Birley Rowbotham" 1884 death obituary "Dr. Birley" OR "Dr Birley" Brixton - "John Hampden" 1819-1891 flat earth obituary OR death Swindon Hertford - NHM CalmView: Hampden flat; Breach

Keywords for next runs (built from the documents, not yet tried): "Coulcher" Downham Market surgeon; "Is Water Level or Convex After All"; "Water, Not Convex" Carpenter 1871; "Wallace's Wonderful Water" 1875; Naylor "Bedford Canal Not Convex" 1873; "Earth Review" 1893 Zetetic Society; "Zetetes" Albert Smith; Winship "Zetetic Cosmogony" Durban; Shenton "International Flat Earth Research Society"; Charles K. Johnson Lancaster; Voliva "Leaves of Healing"; WCBD Federal Radio Commission; Koreshan "Cellular Cosmogony" Morrow rectilineator field notes; Knodel ring laser gyroscope "Behind the Curve" interview; Skiba "Explosive Truth" balloon raw footage; Michelson-Gale 1925 Clearing Illinois; Airy Harton Colliery 1854/1856; German "Flache Erde" Rowbotham; "Dr. Birley" phosphorus syrup advert.

Leads for review

Grouped by the four STEP I priorities, each with the inventor's point it bears on. Tags as in the notes.

1. The inventor's own work

• Rowbotham, Experimental Proofs ... That the Surface of Standing Water is Not Convex but Horizontal (1870) [web: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zParallax1870ExperimentalProofs.pdf; saved]. Claim 1. This is Rowbotham's own account of the 5 April 1870 telescope-and-turf-boat observation from Old Bedford Sluice Bridge (telescope 18 in above the water; notice board, sluice gate and turf boat "kept in view during the whole distance"). It also states his procedural objection to the Wallace trial: the agreed three equal-height discs were not used ("an oblong flag" at the far end, nothing near the telescope). He names instrument errors, refraction among them, as the alternative explanation of Wallace's level view.
• Lady Blount, Flat or Spherical? (1905), "Collapse of the Globular Theory" [web: http://library.tfes.org/library/Flat%20or%20Spherical%20-%2008%20-%20Collapse%20of%20the%20Globular%20Theory.pdf; saved]. Claim 1. The zetetic primary account of the 11 May 1904 photograph: a Dallmeyer photo-telescopic camera "less than two feet above the ground-level", operated by Clifton (described as a "globularist") lying "close under Welney Bridge", six miles from a screen at Bedford Bridge, with reproductions of the photograph. It gives enough geometry to recompute hidden height with and without refraction.
• Koreshan, The Flaming Sword, March and June 1897 [web: http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/flaming_sword/; saved]. Claim 1 (concave variant). The colony's own statement of its optical principle (line of sight "curvilineating slightly upwards", attributed to "gravic energy") and its first survey report (rectiline at 10 ft meeting the water at about 4 miles).
• Skiba team, second high-altitude balloon launch, 15 Nov 2017 [web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-J7OhcQUk; auto-captions saved]. Claim 1. This fills the gap that claims.md flags ("the 2017 balloon result is not reported"). The team narrator reports "a very slight curve" but says lens barrel distortion and clouds make the true horizon "hard to tell", and calls the result a fisheye versus non-fisheye comparison. Raw footage is said to be on the "Explosive Truth" channel.
• Hampden's own letters, 1870-1874 (The Field 2 Apr 1870; Weston-super-Mare Gazette 16 Apr 1870; Epsilon WCP6911, WCP6734). These are his stated grounds for rejecting the umpire's ruling ("scandalously precipitate verdict"; Coulcher "a perfect stranger to us both"; Wallace had "unlimited authority to conduct this survey"), and the origin of the "cheat and swindler" charge.

2. Supporting information by others

• Clifton's reported letter (1904): quoted by Schadewald (Plane Truth ch. 7) and summarised in English Mechanic 80:40. The operator says he could watch the lower edge of the sheet from 2 ft above the water and would not "abandon the globular theory offhand" but, "unless rays of light will travel in a curved path", the six miles present "a level surface". This is a witness on the inventor's side of a test, not an interested party in the zetetic movement. Schadewald (critic) reads Clifton's "shimmering vapour" as mirage. Claim 1.
• Anthony Hewitson's diary, Preston, 16 May 1866 [web: https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0262/ch5.xhtml]. A neutral contemporary hearer of Rowbotham's lecture: the earth "a plane", the moon self-luminous and not the cause of the tides, and the lecturer "honest & intelligent & ingenious". Claims 1 and 3 (the sun-moon model as taught in 1866).
• Carpenter's referee report, The Field 26 Mar 1870 [web: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zCarpenter1870Field1.pdf]. Hampden's referee: the level-telescope view showed the stations "equi-distant in the field of view". He argued that a 5 ft figure in six miles contradicts both the textbook "24 feet" and Wallace's "five feet in three miles", and proposed a boat-recession test instead. Claim 1 (interested-party referee).

3. Closely related work

• Henry J. Goudey, Earth Not a Globe: Scientifically, Geometrically, Philosophically Demonstrated (Boston, 1930) [web: archive.org item]. An American zetetic work of Voliva's period; not read. Claims 1-4.
• "Rectangle" (Thomas Winship [memory: medium]), Zetetic Cosmogony, 2nd ed., Durban 1899 [web: https://archive.org/details/ZeteticCosmogony1899Robotham.o; text saved]. South African zetetic work, includes observations from Port Natal. Misattributed to Rowbotham at IA. Claims 1-3.
• Koreshan concave-earth optics (1897). The same "8 inches times miles squared" read concavely with an upward-curving light rule. Reviewers comparing the flat reading (Rowbotham's perspective law, TFES "Electromagnetic Acceleration") with the globe should note that each model needs its own rule for light paths. Claims 1 and 3.
• Chicago skyline sightings across Lake Michigan (2015, 2017). The press characterizes them as superior mirage or looming (ABC57 2015; Washington Post 2017). These are the same sightings Skiba used. The deciding records are the photographer's data and the lake inversion conditions. Claim 1.

4. The historical record

• The Field, 26 March 1870, p. 285: umpire J. H. Walsh's decision (dated 18 March) [web: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zCarpenter1870Field1.pdf; saved]. This record was previously "cited but not held". Walsh consulted the optician Solomons "at the request of Mr Hampden" and found curvature "to the extent of five feet, more or less" between "Welney Bridge and Welch's Dam (six miles)". Bears on claim 1 and the single-source flag. Walsh was stakeholder and Wallace's nominee. The bridge naming differs from Carpenter's (Old Bedford Bridge to Welney Bridge); the Ouse Washes site explains local naming.
• Hampden v. Walsh, 1 QBD 189 (17 Jan 1876) [web: https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/zAnon1877ReportsCases.pdf; saved]. Judgment for Hampden on wager law only: the depositor may recover his stake if he demands it before payment. The court held the agreement a wager, not a scientific trial, and made no finding on the experiment or on Wallace's honesty. Bears on the TFES "cheated" statement (claims.md Corrections).
• Libel and threat cases: Stratford magistrates, July 1871 (Daily News 13 July 1871, via Epsilon WCP1947: a week's imprisonment for want of sureties); committal, Oct 1872 (London Standard); Chelmsford Spring Assizes, March 1875 (The Times 8 Mar 1875); six months in Chelmsford Gaol (Schadewald; Chelmsford Chronicle 19 Feb 1875 interview saved). Historical record of the dispute.
• English Mechanic v.80 (1904-05), HathiTrust full view [web: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000884549b]. The public exchange over the Blount photograph: the zetetic claim side by side with the "abnormal refraction" explanation, and a cite of Oldham's 1901 BAAS paper at 80:256. pp. 138, 169, 184 and 205-209 are still to read. Claim 1.
• Koreshan Unity Papers, State Archives of Florida, N2009-3 (ca 1887-1990) [web: https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/258146]. Survey photographs with named surveyors (U. G. Morrow, L. S. Boomer, Harry Boomer, others). This is where the field notebooks behind Cellular Cosmogony would be. Claim 1 variant; the single-source flag (colony members only).
• Voliva press record: AP, 18 Oct 1921 (Zion schools adopt a flat earth and "absence of gravitation"); TIME 16 Mar 1931 and 12 Jun 1933 (world trip; bankruptcy); NYT 5 Mar 1931 (back from a 3-year cruise "still firm"); WCBD radio and a $5,000 standing offer (Schadewald). Claims 3, 4 and 6, and history.
• Rowbotham at Manea Fen (1838-40): Secretary of the Hodsonian community beside the Old Bedford River (Ouse Washes site). Primary record: The Working Bee (1839-40); theses by Fry (2022, OU) and Langdon (2000, White Rose eTheses). This is the setting of the first canal experiment. Claim 1 and biography.

Corrections to earlier documents

• claims.md, "Single-source and interested-party flags": "the umpire's Field reports of 18 and 26 March 1870 are cited but not held". They are now held: The Field 35(900): 285, 26 March 1870 prints Carpenter's report (dated 14 March), Coulcher's diagrams and Walsh's decision (dated 18 March) (research/files/wku-zCarpenter1870Field1.pdf). The "18 March" item is the date of Walsh's decision as printed on 26 March, not a separate report.
• claims.md, Corrections, Wallace bullet: "The TFES claim that a court found he 'cheated' ... should be checked against the primary record." Checked for the civil case: Hampden v. Walsh (1876) decided only the deposit question under the Gaming Act and made no finding about the experiment or Wallace's conduct. The words "cheat and swindler" are Hampden's own, in letters that were the subject of the libel proceedings (Epsilon WCP6734). The criminal libel judgments themselves (1871-1875) were not read this run.
• Any document that uses the Internet Archive file "ZeteticCosmogony1899Robotham.o" as Rowbotham's work is wrong: the 1899 Zetetic Cosmogony is by "Rectangle", printed in Durban.