Life, the universe and everything
What a pleasure it is to work on an orrery! What is an orrery? Named after the Earl of Orrery, who commissioned the first one in 1704, it is a model representation of some part of the solar system that shows where and how the planets interact. They are lovely things and just a short time spent with one helps to ground one’s feelings about life, the universe and everything.
It was therefore a huge privilege recently to work on one myself. This is modern orrery designed and built by the late Roland Jarvis and purchased by my customer in the summer of 2017. This beautiful device is a perpetual calendar timepiece, raised on four plain brass columns, mounted on a circular, black painted base, beneath a glass dome. It uses a re-purposed French mantel clock movement of very high quality.
The brass columns support the silvered calendar dial with concentric month, day and five-day tracks. These are read via a hand fitted to the rotating central section with heliocentric-rotating planet earth with ball moon over moonphase, age of moon and 360 degree dial, opposite a second dial with astrological symbols, subsidiary bisextile dial and year aperture (expressed by the last two numerals of the year).
Roland Jarvis had designed the orrery to operate, for accuracy, from the minute wheel in the motion work between the front of the clock and the dial, and was then geared back through the plates. In the end my work was straightforward; the quality of the movement and the design meant that the whole device worked well from one ‘normal’-sized mainspring.
It a lovely project and so good to see it running again.