Between 1774 and 1881 the Eise Eisinga (1744-1828) built an accurate scale model of the solar system in the living room of his own house in Franeker, a city in Frisia, one of the seven United Dutch Provinces. Eisinga wanted to show how the solar system really works. All the planets, stars, sun and moon move exactly as they do in reality and they have been doing so for more than 230 years, all driven by a mechanism made of wooden hoops and disks with more than 10 000 nails serving as gear teeth. All the planets in Eisinga’s model orbit the sun at the same speed as do the real planets: Mercury in 88 days, the earth in one year, and Saturn in more than 29 years. Besides this model, Eisinga also built all kinds of special clocks that indicate the day, the date, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the apparent movement of the heavens due to the rotation of the earth, and other phenomena. Controlling this gear mechanism are a pendulum clock and nine weights. Many historic astronomical instruments are on display as well, and devotes a lot of attention to modern astronomy and space exploration.
City: Franeker
Country: Netherlands
Address: Eise Eisingastraat 3
Website: http://www.planetarium-friesland.nl