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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/16830151.html
Smithsonian wisdom: "Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity
predicted that the gravity of an extremely dense body could bend a ray
of light so severely that it could not escape."

Giants of Science Stephen Hawking and Clifford Will explain to
Einstein zombie world why John Michell was unable to discover what
Albert Einstein has discovered. John Michell did not know the
Michelson-Morley experiment and special relativity:

http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html
Stephen Hawking: "Both Mitchell and Laplace thought of light as
consisting of particles, rather like cannon balls, that could be
slowed down by gravity, and made to fall back on the star. But a
famous experiment, carried out by two Americans, Michelson and Morley
in 1887, showed that light always travelled at a speed of one hundred
and eighty six thousand miles a second, no matter where it came from.
How then could gravity slow down light, and make it fall back."

http://admin.wadsworth.com/resource_uploads/static_resources/0534493394/4891/Ch01-Essay.pdf
Clifford Will: "The first glimmerings of the black hole idea date to
the 18th century, in the writings of a British amateur astronomer, the
Reverend John Michell. Reasoning on the basis of the corpuscular
theory that light would be attracted by gravity, he noted that the
speed of light emitted from the surface of a massive body would be
reduced by the time the light was very far from the source. (Michell
of course did not know special relativity.)"

Dwarfs of Science John Norton and Jean Eisenstaedt seem to disagree
with Giants of Science Stephen Hawking and Clifford Will but who
cares:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as
evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost
universally use it as support for the light postulate of special
relativity......THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT IS FULLY COMPATIBLE
WITH AN EMISSION THEORY OF LIGHT THAT CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT
POSTULATE."

http://ustl1.univ-lille1.fr/culture/publication/lna/detail/lna40/pgs/4_5.pdf
Jean Eisenstaedt: "Il n'y a alors aucune raison theorique a ce que la
vitesse de la lumiere ne depende pas de la vitesse de sa source ainsi
que de celle de l'observateur terrestre ; plus clairement encore, il
n'y a pas de raison, dans le cadre de la logique des Principia de
Newton, pour que la lumiere se comporte autrement - quant a sa
trajectoire - qu'une particule materielle. Il n'y a pas non plus de
raison pour que la lumiere ne soit pas sensible a la gravitation.
Bref, pourquoi ne pas appliquer a la lumiere toute la theorie
newtonienne ? C'est en fait ce que font plusieurs astronomes,
opticiens, philosophes de la nature a la fin du XVIIIeme siecle. Les
resultats sont etonnants... et aujourd'hui nouveaux."

Translation from French: "Therefore there is no theoretical reason why
the speed of light should not depend on the speed of the source and
the speed of the terrestrial observer as well; even more clearly,
there is no reason, in the framework of the logic of Newton's
Principia, why light should behave, as far as its trajectory is
concerned, differently from a material particle. Neither is there any
reason why light should not be sensible to gravitation. Briefly, why
don't we apply the whole Newtonian theory to light? In fact, that is
what many astronomers, opticians, philosophers of nature did by the
end of 18th century. The results are surprising....and new nowadays."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com