A man named Lietenant-Colonel Portlock used oxy-hydrogen Drummond’s Lights and heliostats for reflecting the sun’s rays across stations set up on Precelly, a mountain in South Wales and Kippure, a mountain 10 miles south-west of Dublin. The instruments were placed at the same altitude above sea-level and shined across 108 miles of St. George’s Channel. Technical problems plagued Portlock’s experiment for weeks, until finally one successful morning he wrote: “For five weeks I watched in vain; when, to my joy, the heliostat blazed out in the early beams of the rising sun, and continued visible as a bright star the whole day.” If the world were a globe, Portlock’s light should have remained forever invisible hidden under approximately a mile and a half of Earth’s curvature!
“If we take a journey down the Chesapeake Bay, by night, we shall see the ‘light’ exhibited at Sharpe’s Island for an hour before the steamer gets to it. We may take up a position on the deck so that the rail of the vessel’s side will be in a line with the ‘light’ and in the line of sight; and we shall find that in the whole journey the light won’t vary in the slightest degree in its apparent elevation. But, say that a distance of thirteen miles has been traversed, the astronomers' theory of ‘curvature’ demands a difference (one way or the other!) in the apparent elevation of the light, of 112 feet 8 inches! Since, however, there is not a difference of 100 hair’s breadths, we have a plain proof that the water of the Chesapeake Bay is not curved, which is a proof that the Earth is not a globe.” -William Carpenter, “100 Proofs the Earth is Not a Globe” (36)
“We are fairly entitled to conclude, therefore, from the reliable data furnished as to how far lights at sea can be seen, that the world is an extended plane, and not the globe of astronomical speculation.” -Thomas Winship, “Zetetic Cosmogeny” (62)
Canals and Railways Attest to the Flat-Earth
Surveyors, engineers and architects are never required to factor the supposed curvature of the Earth into their projects, providing another proof the world is a plane, not a planet. Canals and railways, for example, are always cut and laid horizontally, often over hundreds of miles, without any allowance for curvature.
One surveyor, Mr. T. Westwood, wrote into the January, 1896 “Earth Review” magazine stating that, “In leveling, I work from Ordinance marks, or canal levels, to get the height above sea level. The puzzle to me used to be, that over several miles each level was and is treated throughout its whole length as the same level from end to end; not the least allowance being made for curvature. One of the civil engineers in this district, after some amount of argument on each side as to the reason why no allowance for curvature was made, said he did not believe anybody would know the shape of the earth in this life.”
Another Surveyor and Engineer of thirty years wrote to the Birmingham Weekly Mercury, Feb. 15th, 1890 stating, “I am thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of civil engineering. However bigoted some of our professors may be in the theory of surveying according to the prescribed rules, yet it is well known amongst us that such theoretical measurements are INCAPABLE OF ANY PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION. All our locomotives are designed to run on what may be regarded as TRUE LEVELS or FLATS. There are, of course, partial inclines or gradients here and there, but they are always accurately defined and must be carefully traversed. But anything approaching to eight inches in the mile, increasing as the square of the distance, COULD NOT BE WORKED BY ANY ENGINE THAT WAS EVER YET CONSTRUCTED. Taking one station with another all over England and Scotland, it may be stated that all the platforms are ON THE SAME RELATIVE LEVEL. The distance between Eastern and Western coasts of England may be set down as 300 miles. If the prescribed curvature was indeed as represented, the central stations at Rugby or Warwick ought to be close upon three miles higher than a chord drawn from the two extremities. If such was the case there is not a driver or stoker within the Kingdom that would be found to take charge of the train. We can only laugh at those of your readers who seriously give us credit for such venturesome exploits, as running trains round spherical curves. Horizontal curves on levels are dangerous enough, vertical curves would be a thousand times worse, and with our rolling stock constructed as at present physically impossible.”
Engineer, W. Winckler, wrote into the Earth Review October 1893 regarding the Earth’s supposed curvature, stating, “As an engineer of many years standing, I saw that this absurd allowance is only permitted in school books. No engineer would dream of allowing anything of the kind. I have projected many miles of railways and many more of canals and the allowance has not even been thought of, much less allowed for. This allowance for curvature means this - that it is 8” for the first mile of a canal, and increasing at the ratio by the square of the distance in miles; thus a small navigable canal for boats, say 30 miles long, will have, by the above rule an allowance for curvature of 600 feet. Think of that and then please credit engineers as not being quite such fools. Nothing of the sort is allowed. We no more think of allowing 600 feet for a line of 30 miles of railway or canal, than of wasting our time trying to square the circle”
The Suez Canal which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea is a clear proof of the Earth’s and water’s non-convexity. The canal is 100 miles long and without any locks so the water within is an uninterrupted continuation of the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. When it was constructed, the Earth’s supposed curvature was not taken into account, it was dug along a horizontal datum line 26 feet below sea-level, passing through several lakes from one sea to the other, with the datum line and the water’s surface running perfectly parallel over the 100 miles. The average level of the Mediterranean is 6 inches above the Red Sea, while the floodtides in the Red Sea rise 4 feet above the highest and drop 3 feet below the lowest in the Mediterranean, making the half-tide level of the Red Sea, the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, and the 100 miles of water in the canal, all a clear continuation of the same horizontal line! Were they instead the supposed curved line of globe-Earthers, the water in the center of the canal would be 1666 feet (50² x 8 inches = 1666 feet 8 inches) above the respective Seas on either side!
“The distance between the Red Sea at Suez and the Mediterranean Sea is 100 statute miles, the datum line of the Canal being 26 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and is continued horizontally the whole way from sea to sea, there not being a single lock on the Canal, the surface of the water being parallel with the datum line. It is thus clear that there is no curvature or globularity for the whole hundred miles between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; had there been, according to the Astronomic theory, the middle of the Canal would have been 1,666 feet higher than at either end, whereas the Canal is perfectly horizontal for the whole distance. The Great Canal of China, said to be 700 miles in length, was made without regard to any allowance for supposed curvature, as the Chinese believe the Earth to be a Stationary Plane. I may also add that no allowance was made for it in the North Sea Canal, or in the Manchester Ship Canal, both recently constructed, thus clearly proving that there is no globularity in Earth or Sea, so that the world cannot possibly be a Planet.” -David Wardlaw Scott, “Terra Firma” (134)