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| A brass orrery in the cellar at Dunsink. [Photograph | Tim O'Riley] [click on the image to progress] |
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| An orrery is a working model of the solar system, often driven by clockwork or, in this case, manually set in motion with a small crank handle. At the centre of the array sits the sun, surrounded by spheres representing the various planets and moons. Every element is designed to work in unison with moons revolving around planets and planets around the sun. In a discussion of 18th Century orreries like the one at Dunsink, Barry Love maintains that, 'not only did these machines have an instructional-inspirational purpose, but they also served as a symbol of the age in displaying the mechanistic view of the world system. Each time a person glanced at a planetarium or watched a demonstration of an orrery, he gained a reassuring sense of the stability of the solar system, and the orderliness and predictability of the Newtonian system of the world.' J. Barry Love, ‘The Miniature Solar Systems of David Rittenhouse’, Smithsonian Journal of History, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1968-69, pp1-16, p15. |
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