Airy's Failure

The experiment called Airy’s Failure was a test conducted by Astronomer Royal Sir George Biddell Airy in 1871, in which Airy failed to detect the motion of the earth. The experiment showed that the stars move relative to a fixed Earth. By first filling a telescope with water to slow down the speed of light inside, then calculating the tilt necessary to get the starlight directly down the tube, Airy unintentionally demonstrated that the earth was fixed horizontally since the starlight came in at the correct angle without needing to change the tilt of the telescope.

Malcolm Bowden
Malcom Bowden gives an overview of Airy's Failure. Runtime: 6m

Video Description:

(Archive)

Neville Jones
Reality Reviewed: Airy's experiment By Neville Thomas Jones, Ph.D. (bio) Full Text Link

François Arago
In 1810 physicist François Arago performed an experiment designed to collect the light of stars near the ecliptic at different times of the year, as the Earth would be moving at different velocities either towards or away from the stars in its orbit around the Sun. On p.9 of The Optics and Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (Archive) from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science we read about Argo's experiment:

Following Arago's results various theories were put forth to explain it. From The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (Archive) by George Johnson we read about the explanation given by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel:

Resources

 * Airy's paper
 * Airy's Telescope Specifications
 * Arago’s experiments on the speed of light
 * François Arago: A 19th Century French Humanist and Pioneer in Astrophysics