2026-10-06 Library of Congress research guide, Parallax

URL: https://guides.loc.gov/flat-earth/books ("The Flat Earth and its Advocates: A List of References"; originally by Ruth Freitag, May 1998, updated 2025). Result: positive. This is a bibliography with call numbers, a strong base for later runs. The pages "Journal Articles" and "Science & Technical Reports" were not reached.

Items bearing on the project [web: https://guides.loc.gov/flat-earth/books]:

Priority 1 (the inventor's own work) - [Rowbotham], Zetetic astronomy. A description of several experiments which prove that the surface of the sea is a perfect plane, and that the earth is not a globe. Being the substance of a paper read before the Royal Astronomical Society on the evening of Dec. 8, 1848. By "Parallax". Birmingham, W. Cornish, 1849, 16 pp., illus. LoC call number QB638 .R87. - [Rowbotham], Zetetic astronomy. Earth not a globe..., 3rd ed., revised and enlarged, London, Day, 1881, 430 pp., illustrated by George Davey. Yale QB52 R68 1881.

Priority 2 (supporting information, and the followers' tests) - John Hampden, The new manual of biblical cosmography (London, Beaumont, 1877), 15 pp. LoC QB638 .H22. - "Search Truth", Proofs (so-called) of the world's rotundity... (London, Zetetic Society, 1882?), 2 pp. LoC YA 22774. - London Zetetic Society, Chart and compass, sextant and sundial... plumbline and pendulum, globe or plane? (1887), 8 pp. British Library c.19.(9.). This is a letter to naval officers, a lead on the navigation arguments. - The infidel globe or Scientific witchcraft (1884), 4 pp. LoC YA 22866. - W. Carpenter, One hundred proofs... (Baltimore, 1885), on Gutenberg. - A. R. Wallace, My Life (1905) vol.2 pp.381-393 ("Hampden and the flat earth"), on HathiTrust. This is the tester's own account of the 1870 test.

Priority 3 (related work) - Alex Gleason, Is the Bible from heaven? Is the earth a globe? 2nd ed., revised and enlarged, Buffalo, Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Co. [1893], xix + 402 pp., with map and plates. LoC QB638 .G56. On the Internet Archive. This is the source of the project's Gleason map. - T. Winship ("Rectangle"), Zetetic cosmogony (Durban, 1899; first published 1897). LoC QB638 .W77. - D. W. Scott, Terra firma (1901). J. E. Quinlan, The Earth a plane (1906). F. H. Cook, The terrestrial plane (1908). A. V. White, The shape of the earth (Toronto, 1909). C. W. Morse (1913). C. A. Smith (1918). G. Johnson (1923). H. J. Goudey (1930). W. Edgell (1927).

Later accounts (secondary): Garwood 2008; Schadewald 2008 (Worlds of their own); Michell 1984; Patrick Moore 1972; Gardner 1957.

Bearing: the 1849 title-page claim of an RAS paper is a historical-record question (priority 4). See the cantab note: De Morgan wrote that no such paper appears in the Society's Notices.