As professor of economics at the East India Company College in 1810 Thomas Malthus became the first economic authority ever to receive in toto the vital statistics of a world-embracing spherical empire. At the very end of the 18th century Malthus published his documented thesis that humanity was multiplying its numbers at a geometric (exponential) rate of gain while increasing life-support production at only an arithmetic (linear) rate of gain. And since the Earth is a finite, closed-system sphere, it apparently became scientifically manifest that there is a fundamental inadequacy of life support on our planet. Until then all opinions on such matters had been pure guesses.