METHODS YEAR C-Values COMMENTS REMARKS

Romer's 1675 200,000 Ole Roemer noticed, while observing It was the first
Method km/s Jupiter's moons, that the times of the measurement
eclipses of the moons of Jupiter seemed to made using
depend on the relative positions of Jupiter Astronomy and the
and Earth. If Earth was close to Jupiter, the value for the
orbits of its moons appeared to speed up. If diameter of the
Earth was far from Jupiter, they seemed to Earth's orbit was
slow down. Reasoning that the moons not that accurate at
orbital velocities should not be affected by that time.
their separation, he deduced that the
apparent change must be due to the extra
time for light to travel when Earth was
more distant from Jupiter.

Bradley's 1728 301,000 James Bradley used stellar aberration to Death blow to
Method km/s calculate the speed of light. Stellar infinite speed
aberration causes the apparent position of while using
stars to change due to the motion of Earth aberration.
around the sun. Stellar aberration is
approximately the ratio of the speed that
the earth orbits the sun to the speed of
light. He knew the speed of Earth around
the sun and he could also measure this
stellar aberration angle. These two facts
enabled him to calculate the speed of light
in vacuum.

Fizeau's 1849 313,300 Hippolyte Louis Fizeau shone a light First terrestrial
Method km/s between the teeth of a rapidly rotating measurement.
toothed wheel. A mirror more than 5 miles
away reflected the beam back through the
same gap between the teeth of the wheel.
There were over a hundred teeth in the
wheel. The wheel rotated at hundreds of
times a second; therefore a fraction of a
second was easy to measure. By varying
the speed of the wheel, it was possible to
determine at what speed the wheel was
spinning too fast for the light to pass
through the gap between the teeth, to the
remote mirror, and then back through the
same gap. He knew how far the light
traveled and the time it took. By dividing
that distance by the time, he got the speed
of light.
Fizeau- 1862 299,796 Leon Foucault, used a similar method to The corpuscular
Foucault km/s Fizeau. He shone a light to a rotating theory was wrong.
Method mirror, then it bounced back to a remote
fixed mirror and then back to the first
rotating mirror. But because the first mirror
was rotating, the light from the rotating
mirror finally bounced back at an angle
slightly different from the angle it initially
hit the mirror with. By measuring this
angle, it was possible to measure the speed
of the light. Foucault continually increased
the accuracy of this method over the years.

Michelson 1879 299,910 Michelson started planning a refinement of This method

Method km/s the rotating-mirror method of Leon results in the most
Foucault for measuring the speed of light, precise
using improved optics and a longer “mechanical”
baseline. He conducted some preliminary measurement of
measurements using largely improvised the speed of light,
equipment in 1878. with an error of
only ±4 km/s.
Michelson- 1887 - The experiment has also been referred to as Its results are
Morley "the moving-off point for the theoretical generally
Method aspects of the Second Scientific considered to be
Revolution".Michelson and Morley used the first strong
an over simplified description and failed to evidence against
notice that their calculation is not the theory of a
compatible with their own hypothesis that luminiferous
light is travelling at a constant velocity in aether.
all frames.