Signedin center: Joseph Pope fecit Boston State of Massachusetts 1787
FunctionA gearwork model of the solar system operated by hand-crank, the orrery is used to teach astronomy and to discourse on the order of the universe.
For a video about the Grand Orrery presented by Harvard Art Museums' Ethan Lasser, made for the exhibit The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766–1820, see here.
Historical AttributesBegan in 1776 and finished in 1787, this orrery is one of only five known instruments made by Joseph Pope, a Boston clockmaker. It took Pope 12 years to make it. Half-way through the project, Uranus was discovered (in 1781). Pope did not include this new planet.
Simeon Skillin, Jr. and John Skillin carved the wooden figures, which Paul Revere casted in brass.
In 1787 a major fire in Boston threatened the orrery at Pope's workshop. The Governor, James Bowdoin, sent six men and a wagon full of blankets to rescue the orrery and bring it back to his house on Beacon Hill. Dr. Waterhouse was among those that rescued it.
In 1788 a group of prominent cititzens tried to purchase the orrery for Harvard or pursuade the college to buy it. Pope asked £450, which was a fortune. Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for permission to hold a lottery to raise money to buy the orrery. The General Court consented on November 22. The lottery tickets were sold and winners drawn in March 1789. The lottery raised not only the £450 but an additional £71.14.9, which was also used to purchase scientific instruments for Harvard.
The orrery never worked perfectly, most likely due to the weight of the mechanism and the lack of rigid frames and gears. Simon Willard was called in to repair it in the 1790s. According to the story that Willard delighted in repeating, the orrery would work all right up to a point, and then whole solar system would lurch forward. Many skilful mechanics had been called in to repair the defect, but all failed. Finally the Harvard Corporation offered Willard untold sums if he could make it run smoothly. Willard looked it over carefully, took out his drill, drilled a hole in a certain place, and put in a rivet. The orrery worked perfectly. The whole operation took about an hour. The Harvard authorities were delighted. "Now, Mr. Willard, how much do we owe you?" "Oh," said Willard, "about ninepence will do, I guess."
Primary SourcesMemoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 2, no. 2 (1804), pp. 43-45.
See also Minutes of Stated Meeting 34, April 30, 1788. Volume 1, p. 112; and Minutes of Stated Meeting 39, May 26, 1789. Volume 1, p. 124. Series VII-A: Minutes of Stated Meetings and Related Documents, 1780–1944. Archives, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Published ReferencesJoseph Lovering, LLD, "Boston and Science," in Justin Winsor, ed. Memorial History of Boston, Vol. IV: The Last Hundred Years. Part II. Special Topics, Chapter IX, pp. 489-526, see pp. 500-502..
John Ware Willard, Simon Willard and His Clocks (New York: Dover, 1968), 26-27.
David P. Wheatland, The Apparatus of Science at Harvard, 1765-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University, 1768), 56-59.
I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), 64-65, 157.
Lahvis, Sylvia Leistyna. "Icons of American Trade: The Skillin Workshop and the Language of Spectacle." Winterthur Portfolio 27, no. 4 (1992): 213-33, see p. 229-233. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1181434.