Note 95 — MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE; ANTERIOR TO HIS SETTLEMENT IN PHILADELPHIA.
Reading edition
About two centuries after that period when the sciences had begun to revive and the mechanical arts to flourish, the construction of clocks appears to have been much improved. And in the reign of Henry VIII. a stately clock was made by an artist, the initials of whose name are “N. O.” in the year 1540, and placed in the royal palace at Hampton-Court. This not only shewed the hour of the day, but an orrery-part, connected with it, exhibited the motion of the sun through all the signs of the zodiac, and also of the moon, with other matters depending on them. A similar one, in the cathedral of Lunden in Denmark, is mentioned by Heylin: But Martin, in his Philosophia Britannica, speaks of a piece of clock-work in the cathedral of Strasburg, in Alsace; “in which, besides the clock-part, is the celestial globe or sphere, with the motions of the sun, moon, planets and fixed stars, &c.” This was finished in the year 1574, and is represented as being much superior to a pompous clock at Lyons, in France, which also has an orrery department.