Sunday, September 10, 2006

The Inner World, 1886


Frederick Culmer (1822 - 1892) was a Mormon author who published The Inner World: A New Theory in 1886. His ideas concerning an inhabited hollow Earth, were influenced by three sources, his own idea regarding the natural occurrence of hollow spheres, John C. Symmes' pronouncements on the Earth's internal structure, as summarized and reviewed in an 1885 issue of Parry's Literary Journal and Elder George Reynolds' 1883 book, Are We of Israel? Culmer did not have direct access to Symmes' writings promoting the notion of concentric hollow spheres occurring on a planetary scale. The Mormon writer bypassed the explanations provided by Symmes and other inner world theorists, and offered his own ideas about naturally occurring "attractive" and "repulsive" forces or "powers." In doing so, he synthesized various facts and conjectures on gravity, centrifugal force, planetary orbits and molecular bonding.

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