or perihelia. Jupiter and his satellites, Saturn with his rings, the moon and her phases, and the exact time, quantity, and duration of her eclipses, the eclipses of the sun and their appearance at any particular place on the earth, were all accurately displayed in miniature. The relative situations of the members of the solar system at any period of time for five thousand years backward or forward could be shown in a moment. It is not difficult to appreciate the enthusiasm with which this proof of a rare genius was received more than a century ago, but it is entertaining to witness the expression of it.
“A most beautiful machine . . . . It exhibits almost every motion in the astronomical world,” wrote John Adams, who was always a little cautious about praising the work of other people. Samuel Miller, D. D., in his Retrospect, said: “But among all the contrivances which have been executed by modern talents, the machine invented by our illustrious countryman Dr. David Rittenhouse, and modestly called by him an orrery, after the production of Graham, is by far the most curious and valuable whether we consider its beautiful and ingenious structure, or the extent and accuracy with which it displays the celestial phenomena.”
“There is not the like in Europe,” said Dr. Gordon, the English historian; and Dr. Morse, the geographer, added, anticipating what has actually occurred; “Every combination of machinery may be expected from a country a native son of which, reaching this inestimable object in its highest point, has epitomized the motions of the spheres that roll throughout the universe.”
His friend Thomas Jefferson wrote: “A machine far surpassing in ingenuity of contrivance, accuracy and utility anything of the kind ever before constructed. . . . . He has not indeed made a world, but he has by imitation
