text: After a lengthy search over the summer of 1773, Mason reported that the best candidate was Schiehallion, a peak in the central Scottish Highlands. The mountain stood in isolation from any nearby hills, which would reduce their gravitational influence, and its symmetrical east–west ridge would simplify the calculations. Its steep northern and southern slopes would allow the experiment to be sited close to its centre of mass, maximising the deflection effect. Nevil Maskelyne, Charles Hutton and Reuben Burrow performed the experiment, completed by 1776. Hutton (1778) reported that the mean density of the Earth was estimated at  that of Schiehallion mountain. This corresponds to a mean density about  higher than that of water (i.e., about ), about 20% below the modern value, but still significantly larger than the mean density of normal rock, suggesting for the first time that the interior of the Earth might be substantially composed of metal. Hutton estimated this metallic portion to occupy some  (or 65%) of the diameter of the Earth (modern value 55%). With a value for the mean density of the Earth, Hutton was able to set some values to Jérôme Lalande's planetary tables, which had previously only been able to express the densities of the major Solar System objects in relative terms.
  Cavendish experiment
  Henry Cavendish (1798) was the first to attempt to measure the gravitational attraction between two bodies directly in the laboratory. Earth's mass could be then found by combining two equations; Newton's second law, and Newton's law of universal gravitation.
  In modern notation, the mass of the Earth is derived from the gravitational constant and the mean Earth radius by
  Where gravity of Earth, "little g", is
  .
  Cavendish found a mean density of , about 1% below the modern value.
  19th century
  While the mass of the Earth is implied by stating the Earth's radius and density, it was not usual to state the absolute mass explicitly prior to the introduction of scientific notation using powers of 10 in the later 19th century,  because the absolute numbers would have been too awkward. Ritchie (1850) gives the mass of the Earth's atmosphere as "11,456,688,186,392,473,000 lbs". ( = , modern value is ) and states that "compared with the weight of the globe this mighty sum dwindles to insignificance".