Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/858

838 and in the close, when he came to mention the orrery, he overexcelled his very self." The members of the Assembly of Pennsylvania took a view of the orrery, and, "being of the opinion that it greatly exceeds all others hitherto constructed, in demonstrating the true Situations of the celestial Bodies, their Magnitudes, Motions, Distances, Periods, Eclipses, and Order, upon the principles of the Newtonian System," voted the constructor three hundred pounds in consideration of his mathematical genius and mechanical abilities, and appointed a committee to agree with him for a new orrery for the use of the public. This purpose was not carried out. Mr. Rittenhouse became engaged in public enterprises, which occupied his time till the beginning of the Revolution, when all other interests were suspended.

The praises which were bestowed upon Mr. Rittenhouse for his orrery were extravagant, and seem now even absurd; but nothing, perhaps, can more clearly illustrate the infantine condition of American science at the time.

Mr. Barton, by way of emphasizing the assertion that the skill and accuracy he displayed in the construction of his mathematical and astronomical instruments were not surpassed by similar works of the most celebrated British mathematicians, remarks that "his profoundness in astronomical science and his wonderful ingenuity, manifested in the construction of his orrery, leave him without a rival in the twofold character of an astronomer and mechanic." Dr. Jedediah Morse, in his "Geography" (1789), noticing some of the more prominent productions of scientific ingenuity and skill in America, observed that "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." Mr. Thomas Penn, of London, was surprised that the instrument could have been executed in Pennsylvania. Joel Barlow wrote, in the "Vision of Columbus":

 See the sage Rittenhouse, with ardent eye, Lift the long tube and pierce the starry sky; Clear in his view the circling systems roll, And broader splendors gild the central pole; He marks what laws th' eccentric wand'rers bind, Copies Creation in his forming mind, And bids beneath his hand in semblance rise, With mimic orbs, the labors of the skies.

Thomas Jefferson, the sober statesman, Mr. Rittenhouse's successor as President of the American Philosophical Society, wrote, in his "Notes on Virginia," in refutation of the Abbé Reynal's assertion that America had "not produced one able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or science": "We have