The Spitzer Space Telescope and the Rittenhouse Orrery

Orreries were once an invaluable tool for the teaching of science, representing the movements of the planets around the sun in our solar system. The most famous apparatus was created for the Earl of Orrery in 1713, which is where these tools received their name. The orrery depicted in this tile was the first of two made by David Rittenhouse, a Pennsylvania clockmaker. It was purchased by John Witherspoon in 1771 and was promptly displayed in Nassau Hall. Princeton’s Rittenhouse Orrery was damaged and later repaired during the American Revolution when Nassau Hall was occupied by soldiers. Over a century later, it was exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair then was lost for about 50 years when it was rediscovered in the basement of McCosh Hall. It has since been restored and is part of the Princeton University Art Museum.

Lyman S. Spitzer, Jr. became the Director of the Halsted Observatory at Princeton University in 1947 and later, a Charles A. Young professor of Astronomy and Chair of the Astronomy Department where he “pioneered calculations of the temperature of rare gasses in interstellar space.” With the backing of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Spitzer developed Project Matterhorn at Forrestal Research Campus in 1951 to study “basic plasma physics and the possibilities of controlled thermonuclear power.”

The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) was launched in 2003 as part of NASA’s Great Observations Program. It was preceded by the Hubble Space Telescope, The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Before the mission ended in 2020, it had discovered a ring on Saturn and detected light from a planet outside of our solar system. In 2003, a few months after it was launched, SIRTF was renamed the Spitzer Space Telescope in honor of Lyman S. Spitzer, Jr. who conceived the idea of using a telescope in space to detect interstellar gasses.

Katherine Hackl, the artist of the Princeton Stories tiles, describes the “Spitzer Space Telescope and the Rittenhouse Orrery” tile as a representation of “where we are now and where we began.”

Resources for Further Research

1. NASA
2. Spitzer Space Telescope (California Institute of Technology)
3. Lyman Spitzer Jr. (California Institute of Technology)
4. Celebrating Lyman Spitzer, the father of PPPL and the Hubble Space Telescope (Princeton University, 2013)
5. Lyman Spitzer and the Space Telescope (The American Museum of Natural History)
6. The Rittenhouse Orrery (The Princeton University Library Chronicle via JSTOR)
7. The Rittenhouse Orrery by April C. Armstrong (Mudd Manuscript Library Blog)
8. Stories of Penn Scientists: David Rittenhouse (Penn Today)
9. Articles from the Papers of Princeton database:
   • Orrey to be Shown (Town Topics, 1959)
   • Long Teaching Career Ended by Retirement (Princeton Herald, 1963)
   • Spitzer Wins NASA Prize (Daily Princetonian, 1972)
   • Astrophysicists Lobby for Space-Based Telescope (Daily Princetonian, 1977)
   • Spitzer, father of Space Telescope (Princeton Weekly Bulletin, 1990)
   • Telescope Designer Reacts to Latest Repairs (Daily Princetonian, 1993)
   • Astrophysicist Spitzer Dies at 82; Led Development of Hubble Telescope (Daily Princetonian, 1997)
   • Major New Space Telescope Named After Princeton Astronomer (Princeton Weekly Bulletin, 2004)
   • The Rittenhouse Orrery: Princeton’s Eighteenth-century Planetarium, 1767-1954. A Commentary on An Exhibition Held in the Princeton University Library and A Princeton Companion in the Princeton Public Library collection