Inside Eisinga Planetarium – World’s Oldest Working Planetarium – Built To Stop Doomsday Prophecies

Ellen Lloyd – MessageToEagle.com – Our fascination with the beautiful and mysterious Universe stretches far back in time. Our ancestors marveled at the night sky and observed moving celestial objects a long time ago.

Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, cosmological, calendrical, and astrological beliefs and practices of pre-history.

Unfortunately, sometimes the movements of celestial objects were interpreted in an unscientific manner based on superstition. This often resulted in horrible and frightening doomsday prophecies that of course never came true.

Eisinga’s planetarium was built to stop doomsday prophecies

One man was determined to disprove a contemporary prophecy that certain planets were on a collision course and that the end of the world was therefore imminent. His name was Eise Eisinga. He was Frisian wool-comber and he was not a scientist in the formal sense, but a creative genius who built a marvelous working planetarium entirely on his own initiative. Although it should be added Eisinga mastered mathematics and astronomy more than well.

Image credit: James Stringer

Eisinga’s planetarium was built at a time when the nation was gripped by panic and hysteria. It started with a small book published in 1774 by a Dutch preacher named Eelco Alta, from the Frisian village of Bozum, in which he made a clichéd yet terrifying prediction — the end of the earth. Earlier, astronomers had announced that unusual conjunction of the moon and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter was to happen on 8 May, 1774. Alta argued that on this very day, the planets and their moon would collide, with the result that the earth would be propelled out of its orbit and burned by the sun.

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The purpose behind Eisinga’s planetarium was that he could demonstrate that the planets were actually in conjunction and there was no reason for panic.

The planetarium constructed by Eisinga is still working

Between 1774 and 1781, Eisinga constructed his planetarium in his Franeker, Netherlands.

Image credit: Rapsak

In order to fit it into his living-room, he used a scale of 1:1,000,000,000,000 (1 millimeter: 1 million kilometers). The Eisinga Planetarium “hangs” from the ceiling — a golden orb, somewhat larger than a baseball, represents the sun and descends from the middle of the ceiling, with a number of other smaller orbs, representing the planets, rest in concentric grooves around the sun. A pendulum clock and a series of intricate mechanical gears, which Eisinga fashioned with his own hand, drives the planets at the precise rate they do in our solar system.

Image credit: Ciska van Geer

Eisinga expected to finish the planetarium within six months, but it took him seven long years. He eventually completed it in 1781. The Eisinga Planetarium received a lot of visitors when it opened. When King William I visited the planetarium in 1818, he was so impressed that he subsequently bought it for the Dutch state.

Image credit: John Groen

Eisinga died in 1828, after which his son took over the running of the planetarium. The Eisinga family continued to run the planetarium until 1922.

The planetarium is still in full working order and is completely intact, with regard to both form and materials. Maintenance is still carried out according to Eise Eisinga’s own  and it’s run by curators appointed by the city of Franeker.

If you are in the neighborhood, make sure to stop by and see it!

Written by  Ellen Lloyd – MessageToEagle.com

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