The Development of the Planetarium 

 in the United States 



By Joseph Miles Chamberlain 



Chairman, American Museum-Hay den Planetarium 

 New York City 



[With 6 plates] 



The records of nearly every civilization contain evidence of a 

 fascination for the beauty of the skies. This fascination has often 

 led to an attempt to explain what was seen, to somehow render 

 understandable the complex and often confounding motions of the 

 stars, planets, comets, and meteors to be observed on a clear night. 

 The attempts to recreate these motions in a fashion that appeared 

 simple and immediately comprehensible led to the construction of 

 the planetarium. 



One of the most ancient concepts of the universe that has been 

 recorded comes from the Egyptians. They pictured the world as 

 a rectangular box, with Egypt nestled among a ring of mountains 

 in its bottom. On a river that flowed in the mountains above and 

 around them was a boat which carried the sun. By night it went 

 behind the mountains in the west but came again into view in the 

 morning. The stars hung through ports from the great canopy 

 above — the sky. Each represented a deity. Special gods were as- 

 signed to the planets to control them in their complex paths among 

 the stars. This view of a mechanical universe was in essence a 

 planetarium, for even though fanciful and erroneous, it portrayed 

 in an understandable manner the motions of the celestial actors. 



The Chaldeans developed a comparable model of the universe. 

 In it, the earth is something like an overturned boat in appearance, 

 rising gradually from the extremities to the center, like a great 

 mountain. At the summit of the mountain, the Euphrates River 

 had its source. Near the foot of the mountain, the edges of the 

 boat curved outward to form an impregnable wall. The oceans 

 formed in the resulting hollow and served as a sort of moat to 

 separate man from the gods. The heavens rose above the "mountain 



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