cember 1788.^^ The orrery (fig. 18) has survived and is part of 

 the collection of historical scientific instruments at Harvard 

 University. 



According to a statement in the Boston Gazette for February 16, 

 1789, an apparatus for displaying planets in their proper orbits 

 by means of wires was made and exhibited in Boston by Bar- 

 tholomew Burges. 



Mention must also be made of several members of the Folger 

 family of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Peter Folger (1617-1690), 

 founder of the American branch of the family, emigrated from 

 Norfolk, England, in 1635 and occupied himself in Nantucket as 

 blacksmith, schoolmaster, watchmaker, and surveyor. He was 

 a grandfather of Benjamin Franklin. Another notable descendant 

 was Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), professor of astronomy and 

 director of the observatory at Vassar College. 



The best known member of the family was Walter Folger, Jr. 

 (1765-1849), a self-taught clockmaker and watchmaker with great 

 interest in the sciences. A telescope that he produced about 1818 

 was considered to be the finest in the country at that time. His 

 greatest achievement was a tall case astronomical clock that he 

 devised and constructed; it was completed in 1790 and is con- 

 sidered to be the most complicated domestic clock on record. ^^ 

 Folger also produced quadrants and compasses, and made astro- 

 nomical observations. His observations of the solar eclipse of 

 September 17, 1811, were published in 1815 in Memoirs of the 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences. 



Probably one of the most significant of the surviving early 

 American scientific instruments is a pair of gunners' calipers made 

 and used by paul revere (1735-1818) of Boston. The calipers 

 are made of incised brass, measuring 7 inches in length and 1% 

 inches in width. They are signed on the reverse side with the 

 name "Revere" in the style of script signature used by this 

 maker in many of his engravings. The design of the instrument 

 is substantially different from that which is commonly found in 

 English, French, and German gunners' calipers of the period, and 

 was probably Revere's own. (See figs. 19, 20.) 



^^ Massachusetts Magazine (1789), vol. 1, pp. 36, 37; Boston Gazette, January 12, 

 1789; I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Science, (Cambridge: 

 Harvard University Press, 1950), pp. 64-65, 157; Harrold E. Gillingham, 

 "The First Orreries In America," Journal of the Franklin Institute (1940), vol. 

 229, pp. 92-97. 



3^ Will Gardner, The Clock that Talks and What It Tells (Nantucket Whaling 

 Museum, 1954), pp. 34-40, 97, 106. 



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