The Bedford Level Experiment is a series of observations carried out along a six-mile length of the Old Bedford River on the Bedford Level, Norfolk, England, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was an attempt to determine the shape of the Earth. Early results seemed to prove the Earth to be flat, but most later attempts to reproduce the observations firmly supported the established view that the Earth is a sphere.
Read more about Bedford Level Experiment: Method, History, Refraction, Other Experiments
Famous quotes containing the words bedford, level and/or experiment:
“When, said Mr. Phillips, he communicated to a New Bedford audience, the other day, his purpose of writing his life, and telling his name, and the name of his master, and the place he ran from, the murmur ran round the room, and was anxiously whispered by the sons of the Pilgrims, “He had better not!” and it was echoed under the shadow of the Concord monument, “He had better not!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For him nor deep nor hill there is,
But all’s one level plain he hunts for flowers.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”
—James Madison (1751–1836)