Parallax: Father of the Flat Earth | European History | Extra History

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Planet Wild, Samuel Burley Robottom
2. 6:00 – 9:00: Zatetic astronomy
3. 15:00 – 17:23: Planet Wild

Notable quotes from "Parallax: Father of the Flat Earth | European History | Extra History"

• Thank you so much to Planet Wild for funding frontline ecosystem restoration missions where it really matters. Learn how you can help after the episode.

  about Planet Wild · at 1:14

• Their theories apart from thought experiments. Meanwhile, Robotam's philosophy, which he called Zatetic astronomy, relied on experiments that anyone could replicate at home.…

  about Zatetic astronomy · at 8:12

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Samuel Burley Robottom — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:26
  Samuel Burley Robottom, pseudonym parallax, is more than any other single person responsible for the modern theory that the earth is not a globe. Yet, incredibly, historians are unsure.

Books & papers

• Give me strength. Zetic astronomy. THE EARTH IS NOT A GLOBE. — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Planet Wild — Company · 4 mentions · first at 1:17

Concepts & topics

• Zatetic astronomy — Concept · 1 mention · first at 8:16

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Plymouth England 1864. All is set. A telescope has been deployed and adjusted. Lines of sight investigated and measured. A crowd gathers to watch this face off. Two opposing sides meeting to try and solve the question of the age. Is the Earth round or flat? On one side are the Newtonians, men from Greenwich, many of them with naval experience and seemingly perhaps a bit frustrated they even need to be here at all. Some are navigators and surveyors. Some have experience in the southern oceans. And on the other side is a man who will only give his name as parallax. A prolific and convincing lecturer, debater, and now author who insists that he can prove the earth is flat, stationary, and the sun is only 4,000 mi away. They will train the telescope at a lighthouse 14 miles out to sea, then take it to the rocky shore below and do so again. The Newtonians have precisely calculated that the curvature of the Earth will

1:03 obscure most of the lighthouse, but leave the lantern visible. Yet, incredibly, this will not go as any of them hoped.

1:17 Thank you so much to Planet Wild for funding frontline ecosystem restoration missions where it really matters. Learn how you can help after the episode. Samuel Burley Robottom, pseudonym parallax, is more than any other single person responsible for the modern theory that the earth is not a globe. Yet, incredibly, historians are unsure whether he himself believed it. Part of that is his background. Born in 1816 outside Manchester, Robotam's early life is hard to pin down because so much of it comes from his own accounts, writings that are not on the whole all that trustworthy given some of his later claims. Generally, his life was unremarkable until the 1830s when he got involved in a utopian socialist community as a traveling lecturer and recruiter for the settlement in the Bedford fence before the community ejected him in 1839. That is the reasons given for this vary. In one version, the

2:14 21-year-old Robottom started to advocate the practice of free love. While a dueling account claims that he had increasingly tried to insist that belief in a flat earth be part of the commune's life. According to his own account, Robottom had believed this since the age of seven, where he'd heard his grandfather discussing Newtonian principles with friends and supposedly told them that they couldn't prove the Newtonian model. And when he grew up, he would pledge his entire life and fortune to proving that the earth was flat, which is 100% not an invented antecdote and definitely how a 7-year-old sounds when they talk, right? But whether he tried to force these flat earth views on the commune or not, it was in Bedford that Robottom conducted the experiment that he'd base his career on, the Bedford level experiment. He gave varying accounts of what this was, but he apparently laid down on the frozen

3:08 ice of the incredibly straight old Bedford Canal with a telescope and saw people ice skating on a pond 6 mi distant. Or he waited chest deep in a canal and saw a bridge. Or he stood on a level bridge and looked down at two boats he'd sent flying flags. Whatever happened, he'd claimed that he'd seen the objects far past where they should have disappeared beneath the curvature of the Earth. And yeah, he probably could see them because it was known even at the time that atmospheric refraction could make objects visible despite being below the horizon. Whatever. Regardless of these quote discoveries, for most of the 1840s, he actually turned his attention to another topic entirely, curing death. In 1845, he published a long pamphlet on health and diet titled Jeez, are you kidding me? Okay.

3:57 [clears throat] [groaning] Biology, an inquiry into the cause of natural death, showing it not to arise from old age, but from a gradual process of consolidation, arising from substances which may be so far controlled as to preserve health and active life for an indefinable period. 44 words. Basically, he claimed the body hardened over time due to the buildup of quote earthy substances. To combat this, he advocated not eating bread and only consuming fresh vegetables, meat, and free phosphates, which were the key to health and longevity. He of course advised taking this in the form of phosphoric acid, which is safe when diluted and is an ingredient in many sodas. However, Robottom advised taking it by the half ounce as a way to live extraordinarily long lives like the patriarchs of the Bible and theoretically achieve immortality. Of course, Robot didn't have a medical degree, but apparently his literary

4:53 alter ego named Trion did because the pamphlet spoke of him successfully treating 320 patients with this regimen. It's unclear whether he was quietly selling quack medicine in conjunction with this literature or if that just came later. But until his business of being a fake doctor took off, Robotam had to make ends meet with the three most powerful tools he had at his disposal. His voice, his pen, and his debate skills. In January of 1849, he held an engagement under the pseudonym parallax at the Trowbridge Mechanics Institute to lecture on the subject of the flat earth. Now, it should be noted that this professed belief of robottoms was weird. Though several ancient religions had believed in a cosmology that included a flat earth, philosophers in ancient Greece had proved the world was round and that knowledge was widespread in the medieval world and universally accepted by the Renaissance,

5:50 which is part of what gave Robottom's lecture such a good hook. See, he lived in a time of lectures as entertainment when a traveling lecturer could make a lot of money speaking on a specialized topic like literature, history, and especially science. Victorian sensibilities really pushed the idea of self- betterment through education and mechanics institutes sprung up all over Britain, offering space to lecturers and courses to educate the working classes. Though some of these lecturers were legitimate teachers and writers, many were charlatans in it for the attention and money. In some ways, it was the beginning of edutainment. And of course, the more eye-catching and controversial a topic, the more you could pack a lecture hall for a 6 p or more per seat, baby. Like, okay, maybe you don't believe that the world is flat, but isn't it worth it to pay a 6 pence to watch a guy try to convince you of

6:47 something so nuts? Like seriously, try to imagine a world where people watched pop culture versions of academic subjects as mass entertainment. Imagine it. Are you imagining it yet? Do you have it in your mind's eye? Yeah, of course. It sounds like YouTube, doesn't it? This is pretty much like Victorian YouTube we're talking about. Robotam's first lecture was covered by the local press where apparently he laid out what would be his consistent arguments for the next three decades. Namely that the Earth was not a globe.

7:19 It was more like a pizza with the North Pole at its center and a big ice wall around the outside forming the pizza crust. Also, the Earth did not orbit the Sun. Instead, the sun moved in a circular path above the Earth, and the moon was not lit due to its reflection, but because it was a self-illuminating object. Both were close rather than far, with the sun only 4,000 mi from the Earth's surface, and the stars were not other suns far away, but points of light in the great vault of heaven. In fact, the Earth was the only planet. And below it were the primordial waters mentioned in Genesis before the Earth's creation, and the rocking of the great plate is what caused the tides rather than the moon's gravitational pole. According to Robottom, the Newtonian scientists had it wrong. Not due to some conspiracy, mind you, but because they were arrogant and imaginative and could not prove their theories apart from thought

8:14 experiments. Meanwhile, Robotam's philosophy, which he called Zatetic astronomy, relied on experiments that anyone could replicate at home. This was, of course, hogwash. Astronomers of the time had plenty of hard evidence to back up their claims, but it often relied on math that was difficult for lay people to understand. Ironically, Robottom relied on this same weakness to argue for his theories. He threw a lot of math and diagrams at his audience that were hard to follow or refute, and he packaged it all in an anti- elite language, which would appeal to the common audience member. After all, this was still very much an era of the gentleman astronomer. Formal degrees and even the term science were not yet widely used, and the field was basically a playground for the rich upper class men like Newton who didn't have to work to support themselves. But he also pushed on another hot button topic.

9:10 Because while Robottom jabbed with math, diagrams, and supposed reputations of Newton's view of the world, his right hook was that his version of the world lined up with biblical literalism. In his talk, he said astronomers were not simply wrong. They were attacking religion by contradicting biblical teachings. Then he closed the presentation with the idea that phosphorus could make you immortal. Robotam's first lecture was met with good reviews in the local paper. apart from the phosphorous part which was so derided that he never again promoted it in a flat earth lecture that of course would be spun off into its own separate business where he ran into trouble however was at his second lecture in the town of Burnley where during the post lecture debate someone asked him why ships disappeared from the bottom when sailing out to sea at this question he panicked then said he'd have a good answer in the second part of his lecture

10:04 the next night and prompt ly skipped town. The local paper then recorded the audience jeering when he didn't show up the next day, joking that Parallax had obviously slipped off the ice edge of his flat disc and would not be seen until he peeped up on the other side. By his next outing, he had researched the most common counterarguments to his theory and rehearsed quick and more importantly, often humorous comebacks to every single one. These two were of course unsupported nonsense, but it was the fact that he was entertaining and appeared knowledgeable that made him to a lay person watching seem like he knew more than his opponents. He developed other strategies as well. Like when questioners pressed him too hard, he'd claim they were being selfish and taking up too much time from other people who wanted to speak. When he did not have a satisfactory answer, he would pivot to a different topic entirely or turn

10:59 questions around and challenge the questioner to name statistics that he'd memorized. He'd ask them to prove there wasn't an ice wall and throw out too many falsehoods to refute, not to mention subtly making fun of Newtonian proofs by using words like rotundity to make the idea seem ridiculous. Crucially though, through all this nonsense, Robottom was unfailingly polite and kept his tone even, which granted him more and more authority with the audience, as his opponents, who increasingly included actual scientists, navigators, and sailors became frustrated and angry as he piled on disingenuous arguments. But this growing fame also meant that Parallax's opponents leveled up as well. By the 1860s, people were writing the astronomer royal to get reputations of his ideas. And in Greenwich, the center of British navigation science and a haven for sailors who had actually been to the southern oceans, they challenged

12:02 him to the experiment at Plymouth from the start of this episode. The stakes were this. The Newtonians argued that with their calculations, the lighthouse would be just over the edge of the curvature and with atmospheric refraction accounted for, the whole lighthouse would be visible from the cliff, but only the lamp should be visible from the rocks. Parallax insisted the entire lighthouse would be visible from both perspectives. Except neither happened because atmospheric conditions that day meant that the refraction was actually less than normal, meaning only half the lamp was visible. Yeah, the lighthouse was actually further obscured by the curvature than the Newtonians calculated and Parallax was more wrong. Despite this, Parallax turned to the watching crowd and declared in a victorious tone that because the Newtonians had miscalculated, clearly they had proved that their models were all faulty and no

13:01 one should trust them. He then went on to publish his monumental zedic astronomy book the next year titled Give me strength. Zetic astronomy. THE EARTH IS NOT A GLOBE. An experimental inquiry into the true figure of the Earth, proving it a plane without axial or orbital motion, and the only material world in the universe. 34 words, two colons, two exclamation points, and zero self-awareness. It was a bestseller, and though many copies were likely bought as a gag gift, it continues to this day to influence the flat earth movement. Parallax was refuted again and again, but he spawned a group of rabid disciples who published zetic magazines, argued on his behalf and frequently went beyond his genial nature to stage personal attacks in his name, even lawsuits. At other times, he agreed to further quote experiments against Newtonians, but developed a strategy where he'd show up late, then pull out, claiming that they had

14:00 breached the rules by setting up the equipment without him. Meanwhile, he drifted back into pseudocience medicine, claiming to be a doctor again in the 1870s and producing a drink called Dr. Burley's syrup of free phosphorus, a type of early soda he marketed through Zedetic magazines, becoming a rich man before his phosphate regimen apparently failed him, and he died in 1884 at the age of 68. Eagle-eyed viewers will note that is quite a bit under immortal. Even in the 1850s, when he left his wife to marry the 15-year-old daughter of his maid, he was never fully discredited.

14:37 They had 14 children, only four of which survived to adulthood, possibly, according to one account, because he gave them all his own quack medicines. Sadly, however, Robottom is not the end of the flat earth story. Indeed, the belief would mutate as humans reached the South Pole. flight and space. With each step, it became more conspiratorial as the need to explain away mounting evidence became greater. But trying to think about it another way, maybe we should all actually keep robot in mind as we use YouTube to help us remember that someone with the right techniques, the right rhetoric, well-honed arguments, and an appeal to your own wish to attack your perceived opponents can literally convince any of us that the earth is flat. But if you, like me, are sick of wellspoken charlatans on the internet selling hype with no follow-through, then allow me to introduce you to a group that is the

15:35 exact opposite of that, whose welldocumented deeds are helping bring back endangered species, protect our oceans, and restore forests on our very round planet. Planet Wild is a global community of over 17,000 individuals that want to give back to nature by funding frontline ecosystem restoration missions where it really matters. Think of it as a kind of crowdfunding for nature. Here's how it works. Each month, Planet Wild partners with a different organization and funds projects that will better our shared orbshaped world.

16:06 Then they post a video to YouTube showing the progress and the results so you can see what your contribution helped achieve. aka they don't just highlight problems and stop there. They provide solutions which is why I support planet wild because I can see the direct impact my contribution has on preserving nature and protecting our ecosystems. And all of you fine friendos can help yourselves by joining me in becoming a member of Planet Wild today. You can give whatever amount is right for you, big or small, because every dollar does count. Simply click the link below or scan the QR code right over here and use my code extra history12 to get started.

16:44 And bonus, the first 100 people that sign up that way will get to see it for free in their first month. Yeah, you'll immediately start having an impact and get to see the result in less than 30 days right here on YouTube. So to join Planet Wild and their mission to save our spherical planet, click here. And then to see Planet Wild in action for yourself, check out their latest project, cleaning up Mumbai's plastic river here. The largest legendary thanks to Zelads Architectures Thomas Tate, Lotus Wolf, Joseph Bla, Hunter Z, Friso Van Santin, Dominic Valenciana, and Angela Valenciana for being legendary patrons. Thank you all a million.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Parallax: Father of the Flat Earth | European History | Extra History"?

In order: 0:00 Planet Wild, Samuel Burley Robottom; 6:00 Zatetic astronomy; 15:00 Planet Wild.

What is mentioned in this Extra History episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Planet Wild, Samuel Burley Robottom, Zatetic astronomy, Give me strength. Zetic astronomy. THE EARTH IS NOT A GLOBE.. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Parallax: Father of the Flat Earth | European History | Extra History"?

The episode runs 17 min; the transcript is about 2,866 words in 21 timestamped sections.

More from Extra History

• All analyzed episodes
• Books mentioned on Extra History
• People mentioned on Extra History
• Topics mentioned on Extra History