trying to find out who actually started all this — traced it to a guy who called himself 'Parallax'

ok so I keep seeing people act like flat earth is a 2015 youtube thing. it's not, it's WAY older and I went down a rabbit hole trying to find patient zero. It's a dude named Samuel Birley Rowbotham, English, mid-1800s. Published under the fake name 'Parallax.' Wrote a pamphlet then a whole book, 'Z……