His lectures continued and concerned citizens addressed letters to the Astronomer Royal seeking rebuttals for his claims. His book Zetetic Astronomy - The Earth not a Globe appeared in 1864. He patented a number of inventions, including a "life-preserving cylindrical railway carriage". Samuel Birley", living in a beautiful 12-roomed house, selling the secrets for prolonging human life and curing every disease imaginable. He was also alleged to be using the name "Dr. In 1861, Rowbotham married for a second time (to the 16-year-old daughter of his laundress) and settled in London, producing 14 children, of whom four survived. In fact, only half the lantern was visible, yet Rowbotham claimed his opponents were wrong and that it proved the Earth was indeed flat so that many Plymouth folk left the Hoe agreeing that "some of the most important conclusions of modern astronomy had been seriously invalidated". His opponents had claimed that only the lantern of the Eddystone Lighthouse, some 14 miles out to sea, would be visible. Proctor, a writer on astronomy, and proceeded to the beach where a telescope had been set up. When finally pinned down to a challenge in Plymouth in 1864 by allegations that he wouldn't agree to a test, Parallax appeared on Plymouth Hoe at the appointed time, witnessed by Richard A. However, as he persisted in filling halls by charging sixpence a lecture, his quick-wittedness and debating skills were honed so much that he could "counter every argument with ingenuity, wit and consummate skill". He took a little time to learn his trade, running away from a lecture in Blackburn when he couldn't explain why the hulls of ships disappeared before their masts when sailing out to sea. After measuring a lack of curvature on the long straight drainage ditches of the Bedford Levels in his first Bedford Level experiment, he was convinced of the flatness of the Earth and began to lecture on the topic. Rowbotham started out as an organiser of an Owenite commune in The Fens, where he formulated his theories about the Earth.
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According to Rowbotham's method, which he called Zetetic Astronomy, the Earth is an enclosed plane, centered at the North Pole and bounded along its outward edge by a wall of ice, with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars only several hundred miles above the surface of the Earth. His work was based on his decade-long studies of the Earth and was originally published as a 16-page pamphlet (1849), which he later expanded into a 430-page book (1881).
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Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816–1884) was an English inventor and writer who wrote Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe under the pseudonym "Parallax".