When a young man of 36 he saw a pair of globes at Dartmouth 

 College in neighboring Hanover and tried to duplicate them. He 

 made balls of wood turned from solid blocks, covered them with 

 paper, and finished them off with lines and drawings. He later 

 improved this method by coating the wooden balls thickly with 

 layers of paper pasted together. He then cut the globes into 

 hemispheres, removed the wooden molds, and joined the paper 

 shells to make the globes. 



Wilson next proceeded to procure copper plates of the necessary 

 sizes for his globes, and he projected his maps on them in sections. 

 He received a few lessons in engraving from Amos Doolittle of 

 New Haven, but he was otherwise completely self-taught. 



Wilson exhibited the first edition of his globes in Boston in 1814. 

 They created a sensation, and many persons asked to see the maker, 

 but Wilson was reluctant to come forward because of his coarse 

 clothing and rustic manners. He was greatly encouraged, how- 

 ever, by the public interest in his work, and he continued to make 

 globes in Bradford (see fig. 16). In about 1815 Wilson and his 

 three sons, all of whom were as ingenious as the father, formed a 

 company to manufacture globes in Albany. There they produced 

 terrestrial and celestial globes, the latter showing as many as 5,000 

 stars. Wilson produced a new set of plates in 1826 and made 

 globes in several sizes. Even after he had reached the age of 83 

 years he constructed an excellent planetarium, engraving the large 

 copperplate himself. 



Wilson was married three times and was the father of 14 children. 

 He died at the age of 92 in March 1855 at Bradford.^^ 



Massachusetts 



A surprisingly small number of the Massachusetts craftsmen 

 working before the end of the 18th century produced scientific 

 instruments. Among the very earliest were several members of 

 the King family of Salem. Daniel King (1704-1790) was born in 

 Salem on November 17, 1704. At the time of his death Rev. 

 William Bentley spoke of him as a "maker of Mathematical In- 

 struments" and a "teacher of Mathematics."^* 



^^ Edwin Valentine Mitchell, The Romance of New England Antiques (New 

 York: A. A. Wyn, 1950), pp. 257-160; Kimball op. cit. (footnote 7). 



2^ William Bentley, Diary of William Bentley, D. D. (Salem, Mass.: 1905), 

 vol. 1, p. 182, vol. 2, p. 414. 



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