"The immediate results of introducing the cosmical term into the law of gravitation was the appearance... of two universes—the Einstein universe and the de Sitter universe. Both were closed spherical universes; so that a traveller going on and on in the same direction would at last find himself back at the starting-point... Both claimed to be static universes... thus they provided a permanent framework within which the small-scale systems—galaxies and stars—could change and evolve. ...[H]owever ...in de Sitter's universe there would be an apparent recession of remote objects ...At that time only three radial velocities were known, and these ...lamely supported de Sitter ...2 to 1. ...But in 1922 ...V. M. Sipher furnished me ...measures of 40 spiral nebulæ for ...my book Mathematical Theory of Relativity. ...[T]he majority had become 36 to 4 ..."