by VorJack

While reading about the Flat Earth Society, I ran across a reference to a little-known contest that took place 140 years ago today. I decided that the coincidence of dates was too good to pass up.

On January 12, 1870, a message ran in the magazine Scientific Opinion, offering a wager of up to ₤500 to anyone who could prove that the earth was round. The author was John Hampden, one of the most prominent members of the flat earth movement. Hampden had been writing pamphlets since 1839 on a number of religious and political topics, but his most extreme claim was that the earth is a flat disc surrounded by ice. He had been converted by the founder of the flat earth movement, Samuel Rowbotham AKA “Parallax,” that Bible contradicted the idea of a round earth.

The Challenge

Pullquote: The undersigned is willing to deposit from £50 to £500, on reciprocal terms, and defies all the philosophers, divines and scientific professors in the United Kingdom to prove the rotundity and revolution of the world from Scripture, from reason or from fact.
John Hampden

Not surprisingly, most professional scientists ignored Hampden’s challenge. The 19th century nickname for such fringe belief was “paradoxes,” and while some scientists were willing to speak or write against them, most were reluctant to dignify them with attention. Yet who should finally step forward but Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolution.

Wallace fits oddly within the pantheon of famous scientists. Michael Shermer describes him as a “heretic personality.” He was a spiritualist and had published a work titled Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural, linking spiritualism and biology. He also argued that some higher intelligence must have influenced the development of the human brain.

Wallace’s ill fit within the scientific community may explain why he, out of all the scientists of his time, stepped forward to take Hampden’s challenge. Another explanation was the money. Wallace didn’t have Darwin’s inheritance to support him as he researched and wrote, and he was working as schools examiner to pay the bills. ₤500 was about a year’s pay for him.

The Contest

Pullquote: Parallax, whose proper name is Rowbotham, is not the man whose wager I accepted. He is far too clever for that ; Hampden was one of his dupes. Parallax makes the boldest false statements, and as the number of those who can contradict him from actual experience is small, his assertions are believed by thousands.
Alfred Russell Wallace

Wallace and Hampden arranged a contest on the Old Bedford River in Norfolk, England. One stretch was a straight uninterrupted six-mile stretch of drainage canal that had a history with the flat earth movement. Hampden’s mentor Samuel Rowbotham had waded into one end of the canal and used a telescope to watch boats as they sailed away. He proclaimed that there was no visible vertical movement of the boat through the entire stretch, proving that the earth was flat and level.

Wallace, who had worked as a surveyor in his early years, understood the types of optical illusions that can result in the effect that Rowbotham observed. He set up a different experiment to cancel out the effects of light refraction. Three boats were moored along the six-mile stretch of the Bedford. Two of the boats were moored by bridges at either end of the stretch, and one boat was moored in the middle.

The mast of each boat was marked at 13’4″ above the water line. The referees would be standing on one of the bridges and viewing three boats through a telescope. If the earth were flat, the markers would line up. If the earth were round, the marker on the middle boat would appear slightly higher than the two end boats.

The challenge took place 140 years ago today, on Saturday, March 5th, 1870. Wallace’s referee, John Henry Walsh, couldn’t make it as was replaced by Martin Coulcher. Hampden’s referee was a fellow flat earther, William Carpenter. In turns, both referees looked through the telescope. Coulcher declared that he saw the middle marker as 4-5 feet higher than the two end markers. However, Carpenter declared that he saw all three markers as level.

Naturally, an argument ensued. John Henry Walsh, Wallace’s first choice for referee, was called back in. After examining the notes – and visiting an optician at Hampden’s insistence – Walsh declared for Wallace. After almost a month of wrangling, Wallace received his £500 on April Fools Day.

The Aftermath

Pullquote: Madam – If your infernal thief of a husband is bought home some day on a hurdle, with every bone in his head smashed to a pulp, you will know the reason. Do you tell him from me he is a lying infernal thief, and as sure as his name is Wallace he never dies in his bed.
Hampden to Annie Wallace

Hampden went crazy. The controversy resulted in a blizzard of pamphlets from the flat earth side, and Hampden tested the limits of his vocabulary of insults on Wallace and Walsh. He mailed letters and pamphlets to everyone connected to Wallace, calling him a thief, knave, impostor, rogue, swindler and so on. As seen in the pullquote, he sent threatening letters to Wallace’s wife.

Wallace reached his limit and sued Hampden for libel in January 1871. Wallace won, but Hampden had signed all his property over to his son-in-law and declared bankruptcy. Hampden would be repeatedly incarcerated, but his attacks continued until his death in 1891. “The Bedford Canal Swindle,” became one of the Flat Earthers battle cries.

Hampden’s only legal victory came in 1877, when he sued Walsh for the return of the ₤500. The Judge would not rule on the outcome of the bet, but he did note that during the argument in March 1870, Hampden had demanded his stake back. The Judge ruled that since the outcome of the bet had not been decided at that point, this qualified as negating the wager. Wallace and Walsh were required to give Hampden back his ₤500.

So Wallace did not profit from the wager. Worse, his reputation among his peers – already rather low because of his spiritual opinions – took a hit. By engaging with a member of the lunatic fringe, Wallace had inadvertently raised the status of Hampden. Worse, he had attempted to profit from it. When Charles Darwin began to lobby for Wallace to receive a government pension for his contributions to science, scientists like Joesph Dalton Hook would bring up the way Wallace went about, “taking up the Lunatic bet about the sphericity of the earth, and pocketing the money.”

I think the moral to this messy story is a simple one for skeptics: choose your battles wisely. Wallace handled the challenge well and designed a good experiment, but it all fell apart in the face of Carpenter’s denial. There was little chance that he could ever convince Carpenter or Hampden, even of the evidence of their own eyes. In the end, Wallace lost far more than he gained from the experiment.