From the day we began to walk upright on the African Savanah, humankind has gazed at the night sky in wonder and awe. Thomas Wright of Durham once commented that "I can never look upon the sky and not wonder why the entire world does not stop and become astronomers." In this great scattergraph of the sky, we noted five stars that did not hang idly with there kin, rotating slowly round the north. The Greeks dubbed them astere planetai, or wandering stars. These wanderers fascinated us, and next to the Sun and Moon were the most important objects in the sky. Superstition abound, we imbued them with powers over our lives and called them gods. The Romans knew them as Mercury, the messenger god; Venus, goddess of love and beauty; Mars, god of war; Saturn, the god of Agriculture; and Zeus, king of them all. Communication, Love, War, Food, and Authority, five realities of human life, all personified in the heavens.

 

As astronomy grew as a science, great effort was put forth to explain the motion of these wanderers. Circa 148 CE, Ptolemy of Alexandria published his Almagest, the only surviving astronomical treatise from ancient times. In it, he, like Aristotle before him, posits a geo-centric universe, with all the cosmos surrounding it. So detailed was his theory and so immaculate was his detail that this view of the universe remained unchallenged for a millenium. Proof that no amount of genius provides immunity against being dead wrong; in 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, his seminal work on the heliocentric cosmos, with the Sun at center stage, and the then known planets, Earth included, rotating around it. 

 

Fast forward to 1704, when Legendary English Clockmakers Thomas Tompion and George Graham designed a device to represent the motions of the planets around the Sun. The design was given to celebrated instrument maker John Rowley, who, after building one for Prince Eugene of Savoy, constructed a second model for his patron Charles Boyle, fourth Earl of Orrery, afterwhom the device recieves it's name.  And thus began the era of Orreries. And yet, in the 21st century, orrery makers are few and far between. A couple mass-produced plastic models can be found, but in the realm of art-pieces, only a few orrery-makers remain. Among them, John Bennett, who designed the first Wanderers Orrery in 1993. Our orreries are made with semiprecious stones or brass to represent the Sun, planets, and major moons. Correct to a margin of error of less than two percent in relative planet speeds, with Earth taking approx one minute to revolve around the Sun. Check out our gallery for full details and images.