A friend did a subject at university called something like &quot;The history of science&quot; where they studied and recreated tons of early experiments and measurements like this. I remember they did another one to calculate the mass of earth based on the deviation of a weighted string.<p>The idea was that if anyone is ever going to &quot;discover&quot; new things in the future, they&#x27;ll have to use out of the box thinking and measurement techniques to get there.