``Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth reconsidered'' (Q685235): Difference between revisions

It is well-known that Eratosthenes found that the circumference of the earth is 252,000 stades. The question of the value of his measurement is linked with the value of the stade used by him. The author gives the different results which modern historians have obtained for the length of Eratosthenes' stade. He describes the land surveys in ancient Egypt, gives a summary of early Greek astronomy in respect to the size of the earth and discusses the contribution of Eratosthenes. By comparing Eratosthenes' distances from the equator with the spheroid developed by Hayford in 1910 for applications in geodesy, the author obtains estimates for the stade of about 157.5 meters. The article ends with Posidonius' attempt to determine the size of the Earth, which was somewhat different from Eratosthenes', and with a modern experiment based upon the method of Eratosthenes, which was done in the United States by the physicist Philip Morrison in the early 1980s.