Talk:History of geodesy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Geography Portal This article is supported by the Geography WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage on Geography and related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article Geography, or visit the project page for more details on the projects.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.

This text is taken from chapter 1 of the public domain resource Geodesy for the Layman at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/Geodesy4Layman/TR80003A.HTM#ZZ0 -- please Wikify as necessary.

[edit] stadia, not miles

The text judges the accuracy of Eratosthenes' estimate of the size of the Earth based on a number expressed in miles. This is nonsense because E. did not use miles, the type of mile is not specified, the number is rounded to the nearest 1000 miles, and the relation between E's original stadion and the mile that was used for the conversion is not correct. It says that 1 stadion is 1/10 of a statute mile. This is inaccurate by default, because the statute mile did not exist in E's time and it is totally unlikely that E's stadion was a neat fraction of the much later unit. So dump the miles and give E's results in stadia; then worry about the length of the stadion that he may have used. Tom Peters 22:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)