Nimrod's Mistake

Nimrod put the sundial to use.

One shadow traced the way of the Sun, and as the Sun went from East to South to West, the shadow went from West to North to East, as shadows of sundials do. He imagined that cutting the two halves of the day in half could allow for a more precise measure of time.

And, indeed, when he did, he found that the time from one end to the second middle, from the second middle to the middle, from the middle to the other second middle and from the other second middle to the other end, at the equinoxes corresponded to 8 water drippers. He liked the number six, so he decided to change the water drippers to 6 water drippers for such a space of time. And he did.

Instead of 1350 calm heart beats, the dripper now was for 1800 calm heart beats.

Now, he took care to note the time from Sunset to Moonrise. Each night, the Moon rose two (new) drippers later than the night before ... no, not quite. The last of the drippers went more and more incomplete till finally at Full Moon it was only half through.

Six drippers per quarter day, six drippers per quarter night, forty-eight drippers. That's for the Sun. Nearly fifty drippers for the Moon.

So, if two watchtowers were built exactly East and West of each other, and once the distance was such that a man sounding the horn for Moon light pointing to a pillar top did so one heart beat earlier than the one sounding the horn next watchtower, the distance would be such that it was one thousand eight hundred times fifty times shorter than the circumference of the Earth.

Do you know how much the distance is between two places where the Moon rises a certain night at 20 h 5 min 5 sec and one where it rises 20 h 5 min 6 sec, normalised time? If there are 3600 seconds in an hour, and the Moon takes approx. 24 h 55 minutes, this means there are 89,700 seconds between two successive moon rises in the same place. This means the distance for one second is 40,000 km divided by 89,700. Let's take meters and we'll get closer to the result.

40 000 000
00 089 700

So, 400,000 meters divided by 897 is ... 446 meters. If sound travelled instantaneously through space, as Nimrod thought, the East tower would sound the horn one calm heart beat before the West tower, when the towers were 297 double steps from each other. Nimrod had taken the precaution to deprive two people of hearing so they could not hear when the other horn sounded, and be influenced only by seeing the Moon light touch the pillar. Unfortunately, for Nimrod, sound takes one second to travel 343 meters. If you stood at the West tower, you would hear the East tower slightly after the West tower.

Unfortunately for others, Nimrod stood at the West tower. He knew the Moon couldn't have risen later for the East tower, so he decided the one standing there was guilty of being sloppy. Another head for his collection, another headless body for the vultures.

After a few months, he decided that no, in fact the Moon rose at the exact same heartbeat over both towers. Not true. But this idea made the curvature of the Earth vastly more extended than it was, and therefore finished by giving him the idea that Earth had nearly no curvature and was therefore a limited disc, not a full globe otherwise the Moon would not manage to get around it. Noah must have been wrong, as usual, when he thought the Earth had been round before the Flood.

Heber was not there when this happened, he was happily tending his sheep. They were due some months later.