JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I’d like to make a quick addition to an earlier post on a form of Pearson’s planetarium. This is from the same source, though from a few years later, and involves Pearson’s Satellitian, which was a differently-abled device. All of the images appeared in the magisterial if not occasionally problematic Cyclopedia of Abraham Rees (1743-1825).
The first image is a cross section for he “Satellite Machine by Roemer”, followed by “Janvier’s Jovilabe, and the with Willliam Pearson’s “Satellitian”, all appearing on the same 11×8″ sheet and printed in 1820.
First, the Roemer:
Here’s a description from Rees on the Roemer instrument (this courtesy of Google Books; the images are my own):
- A good article on the Roemer and the Pearson machines appears in the Edinburgh Magazine, volume 15, 1832, http://tinyurl.com/ogo36n9
And the Janvier:
And the Pearson machine:
This is the second Pearson instrument, the heart of a beautiful orrey created by William Pearson (1767-1847, and one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society) as found in the 1817 volume of Rees, and features the main gearing for a mechanical display of the functioning of the Solar System:
This is the detail from the following, full-length version, which is 8″x10″–so there’s a fair amount of detail in a limited field:
And the beautiful Dadaist detail of Jupiter and Saturn:
