Trust-Love, Paranoia-Chaos, Leni

[Robert King]

Actually, I believe it was Eratosthenes. His method yielded an
astonishingly accurate estimation of the circumference of the Earth -- one
that was so large that the other ancient Greeks didn't believe it. So they
helpfully "corrected" his error by agreeing that the Earth was a sphere
but making its circumference much smaller. 

Centuries later, Columbus used similar under-estimations (as well as
extremely optimistic assumptions about the eastward extent of Asia) to
present his case that travel westward to India was feasible. He was wrong
about the distance, of course, but fortunately the Americas were in his
way.

Of course, maybe the whole thing was a conspiracy.


Bob



On Wed, 30 Jul 1997, Ted Samsel wrote:

> TV sez:
> > 
> > The earth being round!? Well, wasn't there a proof by some ancient Greek 
> > whose name escapes me? My crippling memory says he went from Alexandria 
> > (?) to Luxor with a stick of fixed length and measured its shadow at 
> > noon in both places and thus came up with the notion that the earth has 
> > got to be round.... Someone care to fill in...?
> 
> I think that was Aristarchus. Ref: the Well of Syene where someone
> noticed that at certain times of the year, the sun would shine 
> directly to the bottom of the well. I assume this would be around the 
> Summer Solstice, being the Northern Hemisphere and all.
> 
> tejas at infi.net
>            "Eat some blackeyed peas and fried banana,
>             smoke me a seegar from Havana,
>             I'll be the King of Louisiana"   
>                              (It's gonna be) PAYDAY  Porter Wagoner
>