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| − | From: http://www.zetetic.co.uk/zetetic.html
| + | #REDIRECT [[Bedford_Level_Experiment#History]] |
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| − | An important site in the flat earth debate is a long, straight stretch of canal in
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| − | Cambridgeshire known as 'the Old Bedford Level'. In particular, there is an uninterrupted
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| − | length of water about six miles long. Over such a distance, according to the globularists,
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| − | an object placed near the water-line at one end should be rendered invisible from the
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| − | other by the curvature of the earth. For nine months of 1838 Rowbotham lodged in a wooden
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| − | hut on the canal bank and conducted a long series of experiments with markers and a
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| − | telescope to disprove the globularist point of view.
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| − | The Old Bedford Level was the scene of further experiments over the years, until in 1904,
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| − | photography was used to prove that the earth is flat. Lady Blount, a staunch believer in
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| − | the zetetic faith hired a photographer, Mr Cifton of Dallmeyer's who arrived at the
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| − | Bedford Level with the firm's latest Photo-Telescopic camera. The apparatus was set up at
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| − | one end of the clear six-mile length, while at the other end Lady Blount and some
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| − | scientific gentlemen hung a large, white calico sheet over the Bedford bridge so that the
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| − | bottom of it was near the water. Mr Clifton, lying down near Welney bridge with his camera
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| − | lens two feet above the water level, observed by telescope the hanging of the sheet, and
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| − | found that he could see the whole of it down to the bottom. This surprised him, for he was
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| − | an orthodox globularist and round-earth theory said that over a distance of six miles the
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| − | bottom of the sheet should bemore than 20 feet below his line of sight. His photograph
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| − | showed not only the entire sheet but its reflection in the water below. That was certified
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| − | in his report to Lady Blount, which concluded: "I should not like to abandon the globular
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| − | theory off-hand, but, as far as this particular test is concerned, I am prepared to
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| − | maintain that (unless rays of light will travel in a curved path) these six miles of water
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| − | present a level surface."
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