Revision history of "The age of the Earth"

This is a list of past revisions of The age of the Earth. Each is preserved exactly as it was last seen, which is to say approximately, and not necessarily here. Diffs are unavailable; the two versions could not be brought to the same location at the same time.

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• cur | prev 2026 ObscuriBot (talk | contribs) . . (3,840 bytes) (−40) m . . (rv; he did show his working and it is still correct. the premise was wrong and the arithmetic was not, which is the entire subject of the page) (current)
• cur | prev 2026 NotTheMudGeometer (talk | contribs) . . (3,880 bytes) (+40) . . (IF THE SUMS WER PERFECT THEN HOW COME THE ANSER WER RONG. I SAY THE SUMS WER NOT PERFECT AND HE SHUD OF SHOWED HIS WORKING)
• cur | prev 2026 an editor (talk | contribs) . . (3,840 bytes) (+150) m . . (→ checked the arithmetic. Perry's range is out by about two thousand million and Holmes by nearly three, so the man with no radioactivity was closer, eighteen years earlier)
• cur | prev 2007 a review in GSA Today (talk | contribs) . . (3,690 bytes) (+340) . . (→ restored Perry to the article. the mechanism was published in 1895 and nobody answered it; radioactivity arrived later and took the credit for a correction it did not make. filed under Stigler's law, where it belongs)
• cur | prev 1956 C. Patterson (talk | contribs) . . (3,350 bytes) (+420) . . (→ four thousand five hundred and fifty million, plus or minus seventy, from the troilite of the Canyon Diablo iron. the samples kept coming back dirty and running that down turned out to be the rest of my career)
• cur | prev 1926 the National Academy of Sciences (talk | contribs) . . (2,930 bytes) (+120) . . (→ adopted the radiometric timescale. thirteen years after Holmes, which is quick by the standards of this page)
• cur | prev 1913 A. Holmes (talk | contribs) . . (2,810 bytes) (+330) . . (→ sixteen hundred million for the rocks. that is a floor and not the age of the planet, and the article should not say otherwise)
• cur | prev 1907 B. Boltwood (talk | contribs) . . (2,480 bytes) (+260) . . (→ uranium decays to lead at a fixed rate, so a mineral carries its own age. the first figures run past a thousand million. Lord Kelvin died in December and the two things are not connected, but they are in the same year)
• cur | prev 1904 E. Rutherford (talk | contribs) . . (2,220 bytes) (+300) . . (→ radium makes its own heat, so the earth is not a cooling cinder. said at the Royal Institution with him in the room. he was asleep for most of it and awake for the wrong part)
• cur | prev 1897 W. Thomson (talk | contribs) . . (1,920 bytes) (−140) . . (→ reviewed the whole question again and the answer is twenty-four million. narrowed, not widened)
• cur | prev 1895 J. Perry (talk | contribs) . . (2,060 bytes) (+480) . . (→ it is hopeless to expect that Lord Kelvin should have made an error in calculation, and he has not. the assumption is that the interior only conducts. if it convects under a lid of fifty kilometres the same gradient allows two or three thousand million years)
• cur | prev 1894 J. Perry (talk | contribs) . . (1,580 bytes) (+60) m . . (→ wrote to him privately, and then asked him in person. he did not take the point. leaving the page as it stands for now)
• cur | prev 1882 A. R. Wallace (talk | contribs) . . (1,520 bytes) (+90) . . (→ noted that he died in April with the objection still standing. he wrote to me about it and I had nothing to send back. thirteen years early for the answer and seventy-one for the number)
• cur | prev 1869 C. Darwin (talk | contribs) . . (1,430 bytes) (+110) . . (→ Thomson's views of the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles. I have no answer to him and I do not think the difficulty is with the selection)
• cur | prev 1862 W. Thomson (talk | contribs) . . (1,320 bytes) (+90) m . . (→ added the qualification: unless sources now unknown to us are prepared in the great storehouse of creation. this is a form of words and not a hedge)
• cur | prev 1862 W. Thomson (talk | contribs) . . (1,230 bytes) (+250) . . (→ the sun as well, on gravitational contraction, and it agrees: some twenty million. two roads to the same answer, which is why I do not expect to be moved off it)
• cur | prev 1862 W. Thomson (talk | contribs) . . (980 bytes) (+620) . . (→ the earth began molten and has cooled by conduction ever since, so the gradient in the mines is a clock. taking melting rock at seven thousand fahrenheit gives ninety-eight million years)
• cur | prev 1861 C. Darwin (talk | contribs) . . (360 bytes) (−180) . . (→ removed the Weald. it was attacked on its own ground and I cannot defend the figure. I have put nothing in its place, which I mind)
• cur | prev 1859 C. Darwin (talk | contribs) . . (540 bytes) (+540) . . (created page; the denudation of the Weald took 306,662,400 years. I give the working so the reader may feel the length of geological time in a case he can walk over)

Older revisions exist but have not been located. The page is believed to retain a full history; it is simply not all in one place.