my evidence

So as we can see, bthimes' own images prove that the perspective effect can be reversed through the use of optical zoom.

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the needs of an astronomer are surely different to the needs of someone viewing an island a couple of dozen miles across the water.  The fact is that it was a fair test, because he used the same equipment at different hights and saw substantially different results. You don't accept it because you don't want to accept it.

The Flat Earth Literature very specifically says that a telescope is required to see past the perspective effect. Does a device which magnifies a scene with a 1:6.1 ratio sound like a telescope to you?

No. A camera lens is not a telescope. Go ahead and ask your nearest priest if a camera lens is a telescope.

An average amature astronomer's telescope might provide a 1:400 ratio magnification. Therefore there is no comparison. Therefore the images are not representative of a scene as seen out of a telescope.

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 19, 2007, 02:01:11 PM

An average amature astronomer's telescope might provide a 1:400 ratio magnification.

That is undoubtedly true of modern telescopes.  However, I am highly skeptical of the claim that such magnification could be accomplished by a handheld spyglass in the 1800's.  Could you please provide a source?


EDIT:  I am, of course, assuming that the telescope used by Rowbotham was the kind which appears in tENaG diagrams.  A hand held refractor.  I am assuming that Rowbotham did not write the astronomer royal and obtain a temporary lease on a 20-inch refractor.  I take it this is a valid assumption?

put up or shut up.  where is your first-hand, verifiable, repeatable, documented, rigorous evidence to back up your flimsly assertions?  quit your tiresome wining and do something.

Use photoshop to enlarge the following images to 900%:
...
And here's the same enlargement with an adjusted contrast to better make out the distant island. I have outlined the area of the island which has suddenly become visible compared o image one through the optical zoom of the camera's lens:
...

bishop, i know you are a hybrid fe believer / troll.  and to maintain that for months, surely requires some degree of intelligence.  which is why i once thought you had some intelligence, and where worthy of debate.  but seriously, genuinely, i have slowly come full circle and now feel sorry for you.  i actually feel bad for having made so much fun of you and threatening to kick your ass.  you really are just a simpleton idiot, unable *and* unwilling to get your brain out of it's deep single-track groove it has worn for itself.

you have repeatedly made the most egregious errors in just the most basic of principles of logic, have repeatedly and directly contradicted yourself again and again, so badly so, it seems on purpose.  you actually set your own traps.  and you are completely oblivious of the most thinly disguised logic traps sprung from external sources.  you just stumble blindly into them, all puffery and false bravado and making grand assertions made in absolute terms.  (anyone even modestly aware of the principles of debate knows you never, ever use impossible terms of absolute, because reality is never absolute and you will be called on it.)

you make assertions that, due to your ignorance of the subjects on which you feign expertise, cry out without your own awareness: that you are a compulsive liar and make up any story to suit your point.  and you (quite clearly) purposely twist the meaning of third and second-party arguments.  you make assertions that betray profound ignorance of the very thing you are trying to sound so assured about (such as optics).  we constantly spank you with your own words.  don't you see how unfulfilling this is for us?  there is scarcely any reason to do anything ourselves, other than just point out the bishop v bishop debates. 

another way you debase these debates, is that you do not read the arguments and evidence provided.  clearly, you read a few words, and auto-spew the same old shit.  how do i know this?  because you repeatedly make assertions that have already been addressed in a way that makes your "profound observations" profoundly irrelevant, sometimes in your own camp's favor.  it is not honest debate.  it is not even moral debate.  it is a fucking time-waster for everyone.

debate is not supposed to be about performing simple keyword queries on the poster's [your] previous comments.  it is supposed to be about building some basic level of mutual trust, goodwill however token, and even grudging respect so that we can debate the topics, not the demonstrated compulsive liars making the preposterous, unsupported, and irrelevant assertions.  it is a grave disservice to the people here, and to the fe cause.  you are a liability to all of us.

to top it all that off, you have somehow talked yourself into believing this is about you.  it *is not about you*  i do not care about you, bishop.  i don't care about your sad, incessant drivel.  most of us (even some fe'ers) care about reasoned, honest debate; about evidence.  not preposterous thought experiments that defy observation and experiment.  not about sketches in "the literature".  not about impossible and laughable misunderstandings and redefinitions of "perspective" and refraction (which you always love to sound fancy with by referring to it as "snell's law").

i could give two shits about what a fucking moron talked himself into seeing through a crappy, dim, distorted, blurry 19th century era telescope.  the guy had his friends write glowing reviews about himself, for christ's sake.  he was a joke then bishop, just as he is a joke now.  sketches from an idiot are not evidence.  direct, first-hand photographic evidence of verifiable provenance, using documented and repeateable methodology, is.  and before you assert otherwise because it's convenient, pause for a moment and remember i will spank you with your own words if you even try. 

my evidence is vastly more robust than rowbotham's "experiment" and sketches, which have been debunked for quite some time with superior methodology and technology.  my optics are superior to 19th-century optics - using the exact same principles of lenses and recfraction as refractor telescopes - with comparable or superior zoom (google for yourself), more light-gathering capability, and with a larger objective lens and far more precisely ground optics and mechanisms.  i have repeatedly stated that i do not care about what your, or your great great grandpa consider as "requirements".  a shitty spotting scope and sketches are really poor requirements.  are we *clear*?  *are we fucking clear!?*  good.  it is incumbent upon you to provide better evidence.  repeatedly referring to "the literature" (a pamphlet of sketches) is not evidence.

if you don't like that, then piss off.  in this thread, we use the scientific method.  not bishop fantasy sketch method.  no one here will mind when you leave.

again i must insist: put up or shut up.  where is your first-hand, verifiable, repeatable, documented, rigorous evidence to back up your flimsly assertions?  quit your tiresome wining and do something.

so...with that out of the way:

...As a rebuttal, lets check this image against other sea-level images of Toronto from across Lake Ontario taken on days with different weather and wave conditions:

[misrepresented photo of toronto debunked here.]

This image was taken from http://www.weatherandsky.com/Mirages/Mirages.html, where the photographer describes it as a "View of Toronto Skyline (53km across the lake) through Canon Rebel digital camera 28 to 400mm zoom."

You should note that Toronto is not broken by the horizon line. How does Round Earth Theory explain this?

This particular image is devastating to the globe theory, because at 30 miles across Lake Ontario the earth should drop nearly 600 feet (60 stories). Quite clearly, we can see objects at the bottom of the Toronto skyline that are not 600 feet in hight....

The 1800's were the golden age of telescopes. Since then, no real advances in telescopes have been made. Once glass makers perfected their technique in the 1800's, the telescope was perfected.

"Newton presented his design to England's Royal Society in January 1672, where it aroused great interest. He had succeeded in making a mirror with a spherical curvature, slightly less than 1½ inches in diameter. The mirror was made of a copper-tin alloy, to which Newton had added a bit of arsenic to make it easier to polish. It had a magnification of about 40. Above this primary mirror Newton placed a small flat secondary mirror at a 45-degree angle, to reflect the light into an eyepiece mounted in the side of the telescope tube."

Does a device which magnifies a scene with a 1:6.1 ratio sound like a telescope to you?

"Newton presented his design to England's Royal Society in January 1672, where it aroused great interest. He had succeeded in making a mirror with a spherical curvature, slightly less than 1½ inches in diameter. The mirror was made of a copper-tin alloy, to which Newton had added a bit of arsenic to make it easier to polish. It had a magnification of about 40.

Be a good loser and admit that Tom Bishop won this debate.

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 19, 2007, 02:01:11 PM

Does a device which magnifies a scene with a 1:6.1 ratio sound like a telescope to you?

Quote from: Tom Bishop on December 19, 2007, 02:39:06 PM

"Newton presented his design to England's Royal Society in January 1672, where it aroused great interest. He had succeeded in making a mirror with a spherical curvature, slightly less than 1½ inches in diameter. The mirror was made of a copper-tin alloy, to which Newton had added a bit of arsenic to make it easier to polish. It had a magnification of about 40.

Be a good loser and admit that Tom Bishop won this debate.

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the needs of an astronomer are surely different to the needs of someone viewing an island a couple of dozen miles across the water.  The fact is that it was a fair test, because he used the same equipment at different hights and saw substantially different results. You don't accept it because you don't want to accept it.

The Flat Earth Literature very specifically says that a telescope is required to see past the perspective effect. Does a device which magnifies a scene with a 1:6.1 ratio sound like a telescope to you?

No. A camera lens is not a telescope. Go ahead and ask your nearest priest if a camera lens is a telescope.

An average amature astronomer's telescope might provide a 1:400 ratio magnification. Therefore there is no comparison. Therefore the images are not representative of a scene as seen out of a telescope.

How can you compare a modern 1:400 telescope with Rowbotham's spyglass? That doesn't even make sense. I did call the local astronomy store here (yes it's cool and it's dedicated souly to astronomy) and asked what the zoom ratio was for a standard spyglass... I was told that in the 1800's the dual lense standard spyglass was around 1.8 to 2.4, however there were in fact tri-lense models just coming on the market that would have increased it to a smidge over 3 to possibly 4 depending on the maker.

Newtons design is that of a reflecting telescope.  Reflectors do achieve superior magnification when compared to a refractor, but they are generally to cumbersome to be hand held.   What little evidence you have presented us seems to indicate that Rowbotham was using a refracting telescope, which is incapable of achieving the attributes mentioned in your link.

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How can you compare a modern 1:400 telescope with Rowbotham's spyglass? That doesn't even make sense. I did call the local astronomy store here (yes it's cool and it's dedicated souly to astronomy) and asked what the zoom ratio was for a standard spyglass... I was told that in the 1800's the dual lense standard spyglass was around 1.8 to 2.4, however there were in fact tri-lense models just coming on the market that would have increased it to a smidge over 3 to possibly 4 depending on the maker.

Rowbotham didn't use a spyglass. Rowbotham used a telescope. Read the literature.

Except that, based on the limited material that Bishop has given us, it seems like Rowbotham was not using a Newtonian reflector telescope, but a much less powerful and more portable refractor.

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How can you compare a modern 1:400 telescope with Rowbotham's spyglass? That doesn't even make sense. I did call the local astronomy store here (yes it's cool and it's dedicated souly to astronomy) and asked what the zoom ratio was for a standard spyglass... I was told that in the 1800's the dual lense standard spyglass was around 1.8 to 2.4, however there were in fact tri-lense models just coming on the market that would have increased it to a smidge over 3 to possibly 4 depending on the maker.

Rowbotham didn't use a spyglass. Rowbotham used a telescope. Read the literature.

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Newtons design is that of a reflecting telescope.  Reflectors do achieve superior magnification when compared to a refractor, but they are generally to cumbersome to be hand held.   What little evidence you have presented us seems to indicate that Rowbotham was using a refracting telescope, which is incapable of achieving the attributes mentioned in your link.

This replica of Newton's original telescope looks pretty portable to me:

http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/image72190-.html

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Except that, based on the limited material that Bishop has given us, it seems like Rowbotham was not using a Newtonian reflector telescope, but a much less powerful and more portable refractor.

Earth Not a Globe does not specify whether Robotham was using a reflector or a refractor. You're making things up.

However, Rowbotham does say that he was able to make his observations using a telescope of considerable power. Therefore we must assume that he was using a refractor.

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Except that, based on the limited material that Bishop has given us, it seems like Rowbotham was not using a Newtonian reflector telescope, but a much less powerful and more portable refractor.

Earth Not a Globe does not specify whether Robotham was using a reflector or a refractor. You're making things up.

However, Rowbotham does say that he was able to make his observations using a telescope of considerable power. Therefore we must assume that he was using a refractor.

Please don't use words you don't know the meaning to. Or, at least, google them beforehand.

I'm curious. If you were in the 1800's, what would you consider to be powerful? Electricity was in it's infancy. Flight was reserved for birds. Most diseases were fatal. How exactly would Rothbowam be able to tell us 21st century folk what a good lens is?

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Please don't use words you don't know the meaning to. Or, at least, google them beforehand.

Google tells me that Newton's first telescope in the 1600's had a magnification power of 40. Therefore I'm setting that figure as the minimum power of Rowbothams quality telescope of the 1800's. Isn't that reasonable?

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Please don't use words you don't know the meaning to. Or, at least, google them beforehand.

Google tells me that Newton's first telescope in the 1600's had a magnification power of 40. Therefore I'm setting that figure as the minimum power of Rowbothams quality telescope of the 1800's. Isn't that reasonable?

If somebody posted pictures using a device with a magnification power of 40, which showed that half-sunken ships were not being restored, would that convince you of a curvature to the earth?