author
John Cleves Symmes
1780–1829
Best remembered for championing a bold hollow-earth theory, this former Army officer turned one of the early American republic’s strangest scientific showmen. His lectures and pamphlets mixed frontier ambition, military experience, and a genuine hunger to explain the unknown.
1 Audiobook
Symmes's Theory of Concentric Spheres Demonstrating that the Earth is hollow, habitable within, and widely open about the poles
by James McBride, John Cleves Symmes
About the author
Born in New Jersey in 1780, John Cleves Symmes Jr. served in the U.S. Army and later took part in the War of 1812. After leaving military life, he worked as a trader and lecturer, moving into a very different kind of public career.
He became famous for promoting his version of the hollow-earth theory, published in 1818, which argued that the planet was made of concentric spheres and could be entered through openings at the poles. However unusual the idea seems now, he pursued it seriously, giving lectures and trying to win support for an expedition to test it.
Symmes died in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1829, but his strange and memorable vision of the world kept circulating long after his death. He remains an unusual figure in American history: part soldier, part popular lecturer, and part eccentric theorist whose ideas helped inspire later speculative writing about hidden worlds.