HIS LIFE WORK
TRIED PROVE EARTH FLAT NEVER WENT TO BED LONDON, January 12. Mr William Edgell who for over fifty years tried to prove that the earth was flat, has died at Midsomer Norton, near Bath, at the age of 73 years. At the age of twenty he took an oath to his dying father that he would prove the theory, on which he had worked ever since. In order to study the night skies, Edgell never went to bed, but slept in a chair and erected a steel tube in his garden pointing towards the Pole Star, which was visible through it. He evolved the theory of a flat, basin-shaped earth, with the sun moving north and south across it.
He contended that the Pole Star was only 5000 miles away, and that the sun was only 10 miles in diameter. Edgell also invented a free-wheel for bicycles, an automatic weighing machine, and an airless tyre.
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Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 34, 11 February 1935, Page 5
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158HIS LIFE WORK Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 34, 11 February 1935, Page 5
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