Parallax: Investigator sites log

Project: Zetetic Astronomy. Earth Not a Globe! by "Parallax" (Samuel Birley Rowbotham), 1865, and Gleason's 1892 "New Standard Map of the World".

Run 1: 2026-10-06. This is the first run, so there was no recheck. Standard 10-minute cap; not a deep dive. Browsing ran in Chrome from Unix time 1791323581 for about 8 min 25 s. Per-visit notes are in research/2026-10-06-*.md. No files were downloaded (see Downloads).

Sites

Downloads

None in this run. Candidates for research/files/ next run: - US 497,917 patent PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/78/e3/25/543575d285be1a/US497917.pdf - Hampden 1870 pamphlet PDF (Wallace Online S179aa) - Earth Not a Globe Review 1893-97 and The Zetetic no.1 (1872) from archive.org - Gleason 1893 Is the Bible from Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? (archive.org, via LoC link)

Keywords tried

1. "Rowbotham" "Zetetic Astronomy" 1849 OR 1873 OR 1881 edition archive.org
2. "Alexander Gleason" map patent 1892 OR 1893 "new standard map"
3. Gleason map "patent" 1893 "US497917" OR "497,917" OR "time calculator" site:patents.google.com
4. "Gleason" "Is the Bible from Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?" 1890
5. "Royal Astronomical Society" "December 8, 1848" OR "Dec. 8, 1848" Parallax Rowbotham paper
6. site:cantab.net PlaneTruth Rowbotham
7. Blount 1904 "Bedford Level" Clifton Dallmeyer photograph "The Earth" pdf
8. site:wallace-online.org Hampden "Bedford" canal 1870
9. "Jones" pendulum "Manchester" Athenaeum 1851 Foucault experiment (negative)
10. "Yule Oldham" 1901 "curvature" Bedford "British Association"
11. archive.org: (rowbotham AND (zetetic OR globe OR astronomy)) OR "earth not a globe" OR "zetetic astronomy"
12. archive.org: title:(zetetic) OR creator:(rowbotham) OR title:("not a globe") OR creator:(hampden john) OR title:("earth review")
13. Google Patents: inventor:Gleason q:map after:1890 before:1894 (no hits)
14. Welsh Newspapers: "Parallax" "zetetic" (1849-1885); "Parallax" "Bedford" level OR canal (1849-1885, negative)

Not yet tried (vary next run): "S. Goulden" lecture; "Dr. Birley" phosphorus inquest; "Birley's Syrup of Free Phosphorus"; "Zetetic Society" 1883; "Manea Fen" Rowbotham; "Welche's Dam"; "Welney Bridge" 1838 OR 1839; "Old Bedford" "Parallax" 1849; "Anti-Newtonian" 1819; "Inconsistency of Modern Astronomy"; "J. S. Christopher" Blackheath "Modern College"; "Buffalo Electrotype" Gleason; "Le Fevre" balloon concave; "Plymouth Athenaeum" Eddystone 1864; "Camera house" Plymouth mirror; "H. H. Jones" pendulum Manchester; "Poinsinet de Sivry" pendulum; Foucault "magnetic meridian" Dundee 1851; Southsea Ryde 43 miles telescope; "Nab Light" 1864; "Carpenter" "Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed" 1864.

Leads for review

1. The inventor's own work

• Three editions with diverging accounts of the founding experiment (claim 2). The 1849 pamphlet (LoC QB638 .R87, 16 pp.) uses a theodolite, a boat sent 6 miles on the "New Bedford", and claims "a fall of 24 feet" [web: Schadewald Ch.1, quoting the pamphlet]. The 1865 book has a bather's eye 8 in above the Old Bedford and a flag 3 ft high [read: facts.json, pp.16-18]. Schadewald calls the later accounts contradictory and dates the work to summer 1839 (Wikipedia says 1838). The 3rd edition (1881, 430 pp.) is online at sacred-texts and reportedly alludes to the 1870 Hampden-Wallace test [web: https://sacred-texts.com/earth/za/index.htm]. Suggested deep read: the 1881 chapter on standing water and its refraction passages.
• Geometry check for the reviewers [calc]. Eye 8 in, flag 3 ft, 6 miles, R = 3959 mi: the flag would be hidden by 13.7 ft with no refraction, or 11.1 ft with standard refraction (k = 0.13). The book's 16 ft 8 in at 5 miles is the bare 8 in/mile-squared rule, with no allowance for eye height or flag height. Wikipedia's "about 11 ft" matches the refracted figure.
• A "Parallax" treatise describing an earlier canal-signal experiment "with a result exactly the reverse" of 1870. The Field says it held a copy with Carpenter's name on the title page [web: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3330809/3330814/29/]. Probably the 1849 or 1851 pamphlet; identify it.
• 1882 lecture: "Dr. S. Birley" ("Parallax") lectured to the Balloon Society at the Royal Aquarium, describing "many experiments which he had made" [web: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3609549/3609555/55/].
• Other own works to obtain: The Inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scriptures; the 1851 pamphlet; the 1872 autobiographical account (perhaps archive.org IAPSOP-zetetic_n1_jul_1872); Zetetic Philosophy (archive.org ZeteticPhilosophyParallax); Rowbotham's UK patents.

2. Supporting information by others (and tests by others, for and against)

• W. H. Le Fevre, C.E., president of the Balloon Society, 1882: he said he had often observed from a balloon that the surface appeared neither flat nor convex but concave, more so the higher he went [web: Denbighshire Free Press 4 Feb 1882]. This is a first-hand aeronaut's statement bearing on claim 2 (the balloon horizon).
• Lady Blount and Edgar Clifton (Dallmeyer), 11 May 1904: a telephoto photograph of a white sheet 6 miles away along the Old Bedford, with the camera 2 ft above the water. The photographer was reportedly surprised the target was visible [web: Wikipedia, citing The Earth vol.5 nos.49-50]. Primary not yet read (Scribd, archived PDF, or library.tfes.org, which was blocked).
• Hampden and Carpenter, 1870: the movement's own printed reports disputing Wallace's result. Hampden, Is Water Level or Convex After All? (Swindon, 1870, 16 pp.) [web: Wallace Online S179aa]; Carpenter's tract on the 5 Mar 1870 test (Wallace Online search snippet). Interested parties (party and referee to the wager).
• Tests reporting curvature, for the record:
• Wallace, 5 Mar 1870: three signals 13 ft 4 in high, 3 miles apart, central signal more than 5 ft above the line; the umpire, J. H. Walsh of The Field, found for curvature [web: Nature 1, 581 (1870); Cambrian 15 Apr 1870]. Check [calc]: a 6-mile chord gives a 6.0 ft bulge, or 5.2 ft with refraction.
• H. Yule Oldham 1901: middle pole about 6 ft high (BA Report 1901 pp.725-6).
• Stretton 1905, Ashby Canal: about 8 in of dip at 1 mile (English Mechanic 80:546).
• Proctor's account of the Plymouth 1864 Eddystone and mirror tests [web: Schadewald Ch.1]. The book's own account of the Plymouth Athenaeum committee (Eddystone out of sight from 5 ft, Oct 1864) [read: digest p.164-166] stands beside it.
• Mirror test [calc]: the horizon image is depressed 0.031 in at 10 in viewing distance for h = 100 ft, so the book's 110 ft Camera-house observation is consistent with a dip too small to see by eye.

3. Closely related work

• The Anti-Newtonian (anonymous, London, 1819, 38 pp.): a north-centred disc with an ice wall. Schadewald calls it the probable unacknowledged source of Rowbotham's model (claim 1).
• Gleason, Is the Bible from Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? (Buffalo, 1890; 2nd ed. 1893, 402 pp.; LoC QB638 .G56). This is the book that carried the project's map.
• U. G. Morrow and the Koreshan Unity, 1896, Illinois Drainage Canal: the same method, concluding a concave Earth (Teed and Morrow, The Earth a Concave Sphere, 1905).
• Followers' works: Carpenter, Theoretical Astronomy Examined and Exposed (1864), One Hundred Proofs (1885); Hampden, New Manual of Biblical Cosmography (1877); Winship, Zetetic Cosmogony (1899); Scott, Terra Firma (1901); Zetetic Society tracts of 1882, 1884 and 1887. Charles Fort, New Lands ch.6, on Oldham's 1901 test.

4. The historical record

• Gleason patent US 497,917 (filed 15 Aug 1892, granted 23 May 1893, assigned to Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Co.). In the patent text, the map's geography agrees with "first class geographical globe maps", and its departure from a globe is described as a distortion ("extorsion") from straightening the meridians [web: https://patents.google.com/patent/US497917A/en]. Read this beside the printed slogan "As It Is" and Gleason's flat-Earth book; both are the patent holder's statements. The foreign applications claimed on the map (seven countries) are not yet found.
• RAS, 8 Dec 1848. The 1849 pamphlet claims "a paper read before the Royal Astronomical Society". De Morgan (RAS Secretary) wrote that no account appears in the Notices and that he read some of the arguments aloud "for your amusement" at the close of the meeting [web: Schadewald Ch.1, quoting A Budget of Paradoxes]. Deciding records: the RAS minute book and MNRAS vol.9.
• Lecture trail in the newspapers: Trowbridge, Jan 1849 (Wiltshire Independent, as "S. Goulden"); Burnley, Dec 1849 (Blackburn Standard); Liverpool Mercury 25 Jan 1850; Athlone Sentinel 21 May 1852; Leeds Times 11 May 1867; Punch 1864 (via Monmouthshire Merlin 3 Dec 1864); Balloon Society 1882.
• Courts: Hampden convicted of libel on Wallace (Times, 8 Mar 1875; 12 months); the wager was later voided. Rowbotham named at inquests over his phosphorus remedies (per Wikipedia, Garwood and Schadewald; primary inquest reports not found).
• The record going quiet: Rowbotham's flat-Earth lecturing winds down in the mid-1870s in favour of his medical business, but he was still lecturing in 1882 and became president of the Zetetic Society in 1883. This is not a disappearance; the record continues through the Zetetic Society (1883) and the Universal Zetetic Society (1893).
• Manea Fen colony records, 1838-41 (Cambridgeshire Archives): not reached.