In 1771, a college without an orrery* was as behind the times as a modern university without a cyclotron. So, for £229 115. 6d., the College of New Jersey bought one of the mechanical planetariums ...

As air-conditioning billows into the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the second floor, Sara J. Schechner ’79, curator of Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, and Richard L.

We’ve known for a long time that the planets travel around the sun, but there was a period where this was still new, exciting, and worthy of public demonstrations. Eighteenth century artist Joseph ...