A survey of the flat earth movement by John Mitchell…
The flat-earth movement became dormant in Britain in the early 1970s with the death of its last active promoters, Samuel and Lillian Shenton of Dover. They blamed its decline on the ‘anti-God, globe-earth indoctrination’ of modern education. Yet there are always a few Zetetics who take their own view of things and will dispute orthodoxy down to its very roots. One of the most obstinate was William Edgell of Radstock, Somerset, head of the well known building firm still active in that town. In his book, Does the Earth Rotate?, he complained that whenever he asked his teachers at school for proof of the round-earth theory, all he received was smiles. The object of his book was to persuade authority to reform the education system in accordance with reason, by which he meant the flat-earth doctrine. He described simple experiments by which to disprove the theory of the earth’s rotation. These included the usual throwing of balls aloft from moving trains, cars and liners, and he also showed how to convince oneself with a telescope that the Pole Star is a mere 5,000 miles distant, not the fantastic 3,680,000,000,000,000 miles given in textbooks.
