The Planetarium of Eise Eisinga was located in Franeker. It was a smaller museum but worth going to! In the museum was a working solar system that is the oldest working one. The model was located on the ceiling of Eisinga's living room. The mechanical operations of the model is located in the space above the ceiling. The gears in the model contained about 10,000 handmade nails. The model is run by a pendulum clock. The planets on the ceiling move in real time. To take in consideration of leap year, every 4 years someone has to reset the clock. The model also shows the current time and date.
Also in the museum was a small exhibit on what Eisinga did for a living. He made wool and dyed it. The exhibit had a short video and tools that he used.
It was both amazing and frustrating that the planets moved in real time. Amazing that the planetarium held time that well but it would have been cool if they could have "time traveled" to see how the plannets were oriented on other days in history.
ReplyDeleteI can't even imagine the amount of time it would have taken to full plan and create the clock. Creating a pendulum clock itself is a heavy engineering task. I wonder if it worked on the first try or if he had to adjust components for overlooked variables. With that much dedication it has definitely earned a place in history.
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