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Orrery   Listen
noun
Orrery  n.  (pl. orreries)  An apparatus which illustrates, by the revolution of balls moved by wheelwork, the relative size, periodic motions, positions, orbits, etc., of bodies in the solar system.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Orrery" Quotes from Famous Books



... Among the studious and well-disposed lads who were, unfortunately for themselves, induced to become teachers of philology when they should have been content to be learners, was Charles Boyle, son of the Earl of Orrery, and nephew of Robert Boyle, the great experimental philosopher. The task assigned to Charles Boyle was to prepare a new edition of one of the most worthless books in existence. It was a fashion, among those Greeks and Romans who cultivated rhetoric as an art, to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... enthusiasm. They were scientists in their way,—the best way of their age,—those fathers of the nation. Jefferson wrote of "the laws of Nature,"—and then by way of afterthought,—"and of Nature's God." And they constructed a government as they would have constructed an orrery,—to display the laws of nature. Politics in their thought was a variety of mechanics. The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... should rejoice more to see him in his grave at his return home, than that he should give way to such things as were then in hatching, and afterwards did ruine him: and that the Protector said, that whatever G. Montagu, my Lord Broghill [Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, created Earl of Orrery, 1660. Ob. 1679.], Jones, and the Secretary, would have him to do, he would do it, be ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... consider as an extensive collection two fir shelves, each about three feet long, which contained her father's treasured volumes, the whole pith and marrow, as he used sometimes to boast, of modern divinity. An orrery, globes, a telescope, and some other scientific implements, conveyed to Jeanie an impression of admiration and wonder, not unmixed with fear; for, in her ignorant apprehension, they seemed rather adapted ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... "You are a Jacobite; I drink my chocolate at St. James' Coffee House; the gentleman approaching—despite his friendship for Orrery and for the Bishop of Rochester—is but a Hanover Tory; but the lady,—the lady wears only white roses, and every 10th of June ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... of his books, is to be found in Thackeray's English Humorists, and a closer study of the man and his works in Leslie Stevenson's "Swift," in Morley's English Men of Letters. The other biographies of him are: Lord Orrery Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, 1751; Hawkes, on his life, 1765; Sheridan's life, 1785; Forster's life, 1875 (unfinished); Henry Craik's life (1882). The best edition of Swift's writings and correspondence is that edited ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... the Wedding. This curious tableau is a striking example of the Elizabethan 'Dumb Show' lingering on to Restoration days. Somewhat similar, though by no means such complete, examples may be seen in Orrery's Henry the Fifth (1664), at the commencement of Act iv, and again in the same author's The Black Prince (19 October, 1667), Act ii. It must be confessed that Mrs. Behn has made an excellent use of this technical contrivance. In the Restoration theatre it was the usual ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... fled with him to England and took refuge in Devonshire, where he devoted himself to the study of the classics and divinity. Afterwards Greatrakes served for seven years in Cromwell's army, holding a commission as lieutenant of cavalry under Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery. In 1656 he left the army and returned to Affane, where he was appointed a magistrate and served ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... is a conspicuous part. Every other year the nations without telescopes see the rising of some new, bright, particular star. Comets, with tails like O'Connell, are so common as to lose attraction, and blaze by weekly into indiscoverable realms. We have constructed an Orrery of Ebony, which we mean to exhibit at the next great cattle-show, displaying, in their luminous order, the orbs and orbits of all the heavenly bodies. In the centre——but this is not the time for such high revelations. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... already married to Lady Letitia Boyle at Christmas, 1641, appears from a letter of the Earl of Cork, the lady's father, to the Earl of Norwich (at that time Lord Goring), in Lord Orrery's State Letters (vol. i. p. 5. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... she began to lead him about the room, pointing out and explaining the curiosities it contained. It was clear that, like many scholars of his day, Professor Vivaldi was something of an eclectic in his studies, for while one table held a fine orrery, a cabinet of coins stood near, and the book-shelves were surmounted by specimens of coral and petrified wood. Of all these rarities his daughter had a word to say, and though her explanations were brief and without affectation of pedantry, they put her companion's ignorance to the blush. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... the Assembly Rooms of our watering- place now, red-hot cannon balls are less improbable. Sometimes, a misguided wanderer of a Ventriloquist, or an Infant Phenomenon, or a juggler, or somebody with an Orrery that is several stars behind the time, takes the place for a night, and issues bills with the name of his last town lined out, and the name of ours ignominiously written in, but you may be sure this never happens twice to the same unfortunate person. On such occasions the discoloured ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... him; but the delay could not be suffered, and poor Mericour, in fear of a ducking, or worse, of ridicule, balanced himself, pole in hand, in the midst of the river. To the right of the river was Elysium—a circular island revolving on a wheel which was an absolute orrery, representing in concentric circles the skies, with the sun, moon, the seven planets, twelve signs, and the fixed stars, all illuminated with small lamps. The island itself was covered with verdure, in which, among bowers woven ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Orrery" :   planetarium



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