63. An experiment involving flags lined up on on a shoreline to prove that the Earth is flat

“In a second  experiment Dr. Rowbotham affixed flags 5 feet high along the shoreline, one at every mile marker. Then using his telescope mounted at 5 feet just behind the first flag looked over the tops of all 6 flags which lined up in a perfectly straight line. If the Earth were a ball 25,000 miles in circumference the flags should have progressively dipped down after the first establishing line of sight, the second would have descended 8 inches, 32 inches for the third, 6 feet for the fourth, 10 feet 8 inches for the fifth, and 16 feet 8 inches for the sixth.”


If true this would indeed indicate that the Earth was flat, however this is an experimental result that no-one has been able to reproduce, and in my opinion Samuel Rowbotham was just falsifying the account.

Dubay has a fondness for citing 200 year old experiments and opinions.  Knowledge by its nature advances with time, and Dubay's lack of more up to date corroborating experiments undermines the credibility of these historic accounts.

In addition,  Rowbotham was by contemporary accounts not a very trustworthy character.  At various times he went under the pseudonyms  "Dr. Samuel Birley" and "S. Goulden" selling quack medicines for all ailments and patenting a number of inventions, including a "life-preserving cylindrical railway carriage".

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