RUDIMENTS, pt. 1028
(ever see an orrery?)
Philadelphia was always a
little more mysterious to me,
probably just because I'd
never 'peeled' it back as much
for examination, as I had NYC.
Nor had I ever lived there. Yes,
some of the thought behind the
two places was the same, but
not all. At all. The layout, yes,
responded to numbers and a
very rational grid sort of
geography-break. Simple
enough. Yet done entirely
differently too. From the
City Hall, at Center City,
everything radiated out. All
the sight-lines of the four
directions came from there.
It was a curious spot. And
behind it was a weird little
history too, of strange and
early societies, for Science
and Astronomy, back in the
days when both of those things
were yet new, by comparison.
John Bartram. Ben Franklin.
David Rittenhouse. The list
goes on. All those oddball
things down at Carpenter's
Hall, and the Quaker Meeting
House. Most of it somehow
survived too, right into the
present day. Then, anyway.
-
Somehow David Rittenhouse,
who was really just a clockmaker,
not an astronomer, became
famous as the 'Great American
Astronomer. It wasn't by accident,
but rather by means of surveying.
(He lived from 1732 to 1796).
Among the things he did, first,
were, as troubleshooter for the
Revolution and engineer to the
Committee of Safety, within
Philadelphia, he helped fortify
the shores of the Delaware
River, and devised ways of
manufacturing cannon and
ammunition. He was a member
of the commission which drew
up the first constitution for
Pennsylvania, he was the
first Treasurer of the State
and the first Director there of
the United States Mint. His
knowledge of metals and of
mathematics aided Jefferson
in simplifying the 'crude' and
complicated coinage of the
new nation. Upon the death of
Benjamin Franklin, he took
over the Presidency of the
American Philosophical Society.
Franklin had willed him his
telescope as well. The reason
he came to be called the 'Great
American Astronomer came
from the fact that he was the
leading surveyor of his day.
'To survey small town-lots
and farm boundaries in long
settled Europe, arithmetic with
a smattering of trigonometry
sufficed, but America offered a
whole continent to be measured.
The property lines of extensive
tracts in the wilderness could
not be drawn from a large rock
or the stump of a familiar tree;
that had to be defined by the
astronomical dimensions of
latitude and longitude. Rittenhouse's
most enduring work was of this
especially American kind; for
him astronomy was a surveyor's
tool. Between 1764, when he
received payment for helping
Mason and Dixon draw the
boundary of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Delaware, and
1787, when he helped mark the
long-disputed line between New
York and Massachusetts, he drew
the boundaries of more than half
the original thirteen colonies.'
-
I realized all of that, even as
I realized I didn't understand all
of what it meant; but then again
I still never know what surveyors
are exactly doing when I see them
marking fields and lines and
boundaries. Measurements and
markings always have their
purposes; but I'm not often
privy. In any case, in the instance
of David Rittenhouse, what
really threw me was his invention
of something called an 'orrery.'
When I first saw that word I
had absolutely no clue. I'd heard
of an ossiary, which I think was
a place of or for bones of the dead,.
But this word 'orrery' - no clue.
I really had to delve and learn.
An 'Orrery,' among colonists at
Philadelphia was his ingenious
contraption (a 'working model
of the solar system), designed to
help teach people about the
workings of the solar system.
His model was the not first of
its kind, nor the first in America,
but it was the best and most
intricate 'version' produced.
Being a self-educated, 'American'
style of man, his lack of both his
'education' and his remoteness
from the centers of European
learning made it remarkable -
his 'humility' as well, which
admitted to boldly affirm that
he 'has not copied the general
construction nor the particular
disposition or any of its essential
parts from any other Orrery or
description whatsoever.' See, the
thing about these fellows, Franklin
too, was that, in the New World,
in Philadelphia, they operated
naively, with their own learning
and none of that old 'Schooling'
behind them. That's what made
all of this so great. Cambridge
and Oxford and all that were just
old, London-based religious schools,
basically, telling you what you'll
learn and how it goes. Not here.
All of this Philadelphia stuff was
hell-bent on surviving its own
definitions and to Hell with all
the old. In 1769, a big thing too,
astronomically, was another Transit
of Venus (the planet, across the
face of the moon). It's didn't
happen very often, but in the
1760's it happened twice! 1761,
and 1769! The 1761 occurence
had been studied, the parallax
determined, and the timings
forecast, and in 1769 Rittenhouse
aimed to move it all another step
along the way - sort of Science
on the wing, or the fly. He and
his team used his newly constructed
observatory Norriton Observatory.
Ut was all kind of a bust, perhaps
70% accomplished, but he garnered
the info he'd wanted. Collecting and
correlating data from other stations,
then pretty accurately came up with
transit time, parallax, once again,
and with accuracy. An American
achievement! His Orrery was
meant to 'inform us, truly, of the
astronomical phenomena of any
particular punt of time.' The
elegant upright cabinet framed
a large center panel, flanked by
two smaller ones. In the middle
of the center panel on a four-foot
square vertical sheet of brass was
to be displayed a gilded brass
ball representing the sun and
around this ball would move
others of brass or ivory,
representing the planets, which
rotated in elliptical orbits, 'their
motions to be sometimes swifter,
and sometimes slower, as nearly
according to the true law of an
equable description of areas as
is possible.' The two by two
smaller, side panels would have,
on one, all the appearances of
Jupiter and Saturn, showing
all ellipses, transits, inclinations,
rings and satellites (Saturn).
The other small panel would
show all the phenomena of
the moon, with time, quantity
and duration of stages and
eclipses, and with those of
the sun, solar eclipses,etc.
Turning a crank set all this
into motion; the planets
proceeding in their proper
revolutions, with three dials
indicating precisely the hour
of the day, month and year
at which planets, etc., would
appear, for a period of 5,000
years, forward, or backward.
Spectacular heavenly phenomena
could thus be foretold and,
attached to this was a telescope,
small but strong, which could
be directed from the Earth to
any other planet, and its
skyward longitude and
latitude, AND the machine
was to be equipped to play
'music of the spheres' as
'God's handiwork as displayed.
-
Pretty amazing stuff, I always
thought; and then the really
odd thing was that the assumption
had been that this would be sold
or offered to the College of
Philadelphia, which had made
preparations for display, hoopla,
and featured attention. But
John Witherspoon, newly arrived
from Scotland to take over the
College of New Jersey (Princeton
Univ), hurried to the Norriton
workshop and bought it; causing
humiliation and mortification
to the College of Philadelphia.
(The grumbling quote of the time
was why would a mechanical
masterpiece such as that go there,
(Princeton) and why Rittenhouse
should 'think so little of his noble
invention as to consent to let it
go to a village'! He promptly
mollified them by arranging the
first demonstration of the Princeton
machine to take place at the College
of Philadelphia, with a series of
lectures, and he proceeded then
to begin construction of a second,
and then a third, unit. The New
World was getting proud of itself,
and its Philadelphia science!
-
I always wondered if looking
skyward was the same as looking
Heavenward. And I wondered too,
how a contraption like that would
have managed the solid 40 miles
to Princeton over roughshod
roadways and/or canals. And
whatever happened to any of
them. Has anyone ever seen
an Orrery in their travels?
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