Orrery
On 8 May 1774 a conjunction of the moon and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter was forecast to appear. Reverend Eelco Alta, from Boazum, Netherlands, published a book in which he interpreted this as a return to the state of the planets at the day of creation and a likely occasion for Armageddon. Alta predicted that the planets and the moon would collide, with the result that the earth would be pushed out of its orbit and burned by the sun. Due to this prediction there was a lot of panic in Friesland.
The canonical view holds that Eisinga decided to build an orrery in his living room to prove that there was no reason for panic. He expected to finish it within six months and eventually finished it in 1781, seven years after he started. During the same year Uranus was discovered, but there was no room for this planet on the ceiling of his living room, where the orrery was located. However, recent research indicates that this chain of causality is dubious, not in the last place because Eijsinga appears to have commenced construction before the publication of Alta's book. The construction of the orrery saved Eijsinga a lot of time, however, because he no longer needed to calculate the planets' respective positions by hand.
On 30 June 1818 King William I of the Netherlands and Prince Frederik visited the orrery. King William I bought the orrery for the Dutch state. In 1859 the orrery was donated by the Dutch state to the city of Franeker.
Read more about this topic: Eise Eisinga
Famous quotes containing the word orrery:
“Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear—his first—as he bade good-by,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
“I’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.—He did not write.”
—Francis Orrery Ticknor (1822–1874)