The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

INTRODUCTION 1?
eccentricity would, because of the enormous mass of the icecap,
produce a great centrifugal effect tending to unbalance
the globe. He made some mathematical calculations to show
the possible magnitude of the effect. He suggested that, at
some point, the icecap would grow so large that the centrif-
ugal effect would suffice to shatter the crust in the earth's
equatorial bulge, and permit the earth to wobble farther off
center. Then the increasing radius of eccentricity would
cause an increase of the centrifugal effect by arithmetical
progression, until the earth capsized. He likened the earth's
equatorial bulge its slightly greater diameter through the
equatorto a flywheel, which would be shattered by the cen-
trifugal effect of the icecap.
When I first began to study Brown's ideas, I examined his
two basic assumptions with some care. The first was the as-
sumption of the centrifugal effect of bodies rotating off
center, and that was sound enough. The second was the
assumption that the equatorial bulge acted as a stabilizing
flywheel to keep the earth steady on its axis. The investigation
of this assumption involved long research. I finally found
unequivocal support for Brown's contention in the works of
James Clerk Maxwell and obtained further confirmation of
it in correspondence with Dr. Harlow Shapley, of the Har-
vard Observatory, Dr. Dirk Brouwer, of the Yale Observa-
tory, and Dr. Harold Jeffreys, of Cambridge University,
England.
I now sought to find, if I could, the ratio of the unstabiliz-
ing centrifugal effect of the icecap to the stabilizing effect of
the bulge. It was clear that the force of the icecap would
either have to overcome the total stabilizing centrifugal effect
of the bulge, or it would have to shatter the crust, so that the
earth could start to rotate farther off center, thereby initi-
ating a chain reaction of increasing centrifugal effects.
The first task was to estimate the centrifugal effect of the
icecap. Here I thought
that Brown had committed an over-
sight, to the disadvantage of his own theory. He considered
die eccentricity of the icecap to be due to the earth's fifty-foot