Posted on 06/23/2011 1:54:10 PM PDT by decimon
In 1893, Orlando Ferguson, a real estate developer based in South Dakota, drew a map of the Earth that combined biblical and scientific knowledge in a unique way. The map accompanied a 92-page lecture that Ferguson — referring to himself as a "professor" — delivered in town after town, traveling far and wide to share his theory of geography, highlighted by his belief that the Earth was flat.
Only one fully intact version of Ferguson's map, which represents the Earth as a giant, rectangular slab with a dimpled upper surface, remains. Don Homuth of Salem, Ore., just donated the map to the Library of Congress. [See the map]
"It's very fragile. It's printed on tissue paper and hand-colored with watercolors," Homuth said. He got the map from his eighth grade history teacher in Fargo, N.D., who got it from his grandfather, who lived in Hot Springs, S.D. — Ferguson's hometown.
"Now, I'm 67. I don't want it to fall into the hands of relatives, for God's sake! And I don't particularly want to sell it. So we thought we'd send it to the Library of Congress," Homuth told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
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The map also has a picture of a man holding onto the Earth for dear life, with an inscription that reads: "These men are flying on the globe at a rate of 65,000 miles per hour around the sun, and 1,042 miles per hour around the center of the earth (in their minds). Think of the speed!" Yeah right, Ferguson seems to have been implying. [Read: What's at the Center of the Milky Way?]
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I fake being cool, does that count?
Better than being cool but fake!
Makes perfect sense. In this version nobody falls off in Australia!
Somebody hasn't done their homework. There is a copy of the map hanging on the wall of one of the dowstairs display room of the historic Hot Springs Historical Museum.
(The museum is housed in the old 3 story + basement sandstone Hot Springs School building, atop Schoolhouse Hill. It was k-12, with the lower floors dedicated to the lower classes and the high school. The older the kids, the more stairs they had to climb; the high schoolers realy were at the top of the heap, housed on the 3rd floor!)
I saw the map the first time we visited Hot Springs, back in 1994, and was fascinated by it. I took 35mm photos if it, not dreaming at the time that in just over a year we would own acreage here, and be full time citizens of Hot Springs a few years later.
I have tried hard to find more information concerning the map, the pamphlet, and Ferguson himself.
Alas, even here, and with a high speed connection, it is nigh unto impossible to come by much of anything about him, let alone a physical copy of any of his works.
The map is a beautiful piece of art work, and was a really ingenious, though misguided, cartographic endeavor.
Till daddy takes the T-Bird away.
There are many, many people, from all walks of life, who cling dearly to discredited ideas, because they become emotionally invested in them. You see it from all sorts and all sides. I could name a few we encounter here, but that would get me banned probably.
It was debunked well before the Middle Ages.
Anyone who saw a ship coming over the horizon (the sails would appear before the ship itself!) would know that the Earth wasn’t flat.
True. But a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.
Who would think the Bible teaches that the Earth floats in space?
See Job 26:
God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. - Job 26:7
Of course, the purpose of all these lines in Job are to show Job his ignorance and insignificance compared to God, not to be science lessons.
Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BC. He had heard that in Syene the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice (the bottom of a well being completely illuminated) whereas in Alexandria well bottoms were still in shadow.
Using the differing angles the shadows made as the basis of his trigonometric calculations he estimated a circumference of around 250,000 stades. The length of a 'stade' is not precisely known, but Eratosthenes' figure only has an error of around five to fifteen percent. Eratosthenes used rough estimates and round numbers, but depending on the length of the stadion, his result is within a margin of between 2% and 20% of the actual meridional circumference, 40,008 kilometres (24,860 mi). Eratosthenes calculation of the circumference of the Earth was only valid through the aassumption that the distance to the Sun was so great that the rays of sunlight would essentially be parallel.
The spherical nature of the Earth was assumed for centuries prior, however, nobody had ever rationalized the belief rigorously.
Exactly.
Outstanding. You’re a fine fellow!
The flat Earth as we know it may be a modern myth. The few ancient maps and map-like inscriptions which survive from the ancient world may or may not have been in reference to a flat Earth. The oldest known one is from Mesopotamia, but it isn’t a purported map of the entire world.
The idea that most people thought there was an edge of the Earth that one would fall off seems to have originated *after* Columbus, perhaps as late as the early 19th century, and probably as part of an effort to make him look greater than he was.
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