The Astronomical Instruments of John Rowley in Eighteenth-Century Russia

Chenakal V. L. , Ocherki po istorii russkoi astronomii. Nablyudatel'naya astronomiya v Rossii XVII i nachula XVIII veka [Essays in the history of Russian astronomy. Observational astronomy in Russia in the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1951).

Vorontsov-Vel'yaminov B. A. , Ocherki istorii astronomii v Rossii [Essays in the history of astronomy in Russia] (Moscow, 1956), 48–66.

All the astronomical research in Russia at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century by Lyubimov, Bruce, Prokopovich, and Peter the Great, and also the teachers at the Mathematics and Navigation School and the Naval Academy, was occasional and not regular work. Systematic astronomical research began in Russia only with the founding, in 1725, of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the appearance of experienced astronomers, and when an excellently equipped astronomical observatory was installed. In the course of the first half-century of the Academy such famous astromoners as Delisle Nicolas Joseph (1688–1768), Winsheim Christian-Nikolaus (1694–1751), Heinsius Gottfrid (1709–69), Popov Ivanovich Nikita (1720–82), Grischow Augustin-Naphanail (1726–60), Yakov-Levich Rumovsky Stepan (1734–1812) and Petr Borisovich lnokhodtsev (1742–1806) worked within its walls. See Chenakal V. L. and Nemiro A. A. , “Astronomiya” (v S. Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk 18 veka) [Astronomy (in the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the eighteenth century)] in Isto riya Akademii nauk SSSR , i (Moscow-Leningrad, 1958), 95–101, 210–21, 357–62.

Pekarsky P. P. , Nauka i literatura pri Petre Velikom [Science and literature in the reign of Peter the Great], i (St Petersburg, 1862).

Esipov G. V. , Sbornik vypisok iz archivnykh bumag o Petre Velikom [Collection of extracts from archive documents about Peter the Great], i (Moscow, 1872).

Viktorov A. , Opisanie zapisnykh knig i bumag starinnykh dvortsovykh prikazov 1584–1725 [Description of the register books and papers of the old court chancellaries 1584–1725] (Moscow, 1877).

Musei imperialis petropolitani, vol. II, pars prima qua continentur res artificiales (St Petersburg, 1741).

If we ignore the few brief references to Rowley and brief descriptions of certain of his instruments in articles devoted to the history of scientific instruments, then the only biographical information about him is contained in Taylor E. G. R. , The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, 1485–1714 (Cambridge, 1954, reprinted 1967), 294–5.

Musei …, 41.

Ibid., 42.

Ibid., 48.

Ibid., 52.

Ibid., 53.

Ibid., 55.

Ibid., 56.

Ibid.

State Hermitage. Section of the history of Russian culture, no. TKh-1202.

Summer Palace Museum of Peter I in Leningrad, no. TsKh–1687–IV; LD 148–v.

Central State Archive of Ancient Documents (Moscow), Cabinet of Peter the Great, u, bk. 24, f. 171.

Ibid., f. 164.

Ibid., f. 167.

Ibid., ff. 160^r-v.

Ibid., f. 165.

Coester A. und Gerland E. Dr , Beschreibung der Sammlung astronomischer geodätischer und physikalischer Apparate im Königlichen Museum zu Cassel (Cassel, 1878), 22–3, pl. I, fig. 3.

Gould R. T. , “The Original Orrery Restored: An early 18th-century mechanical model of the solar system”, The illustrated London news, 18 December 1937.

Rice Howard C. Jnr , The Rittenhouse Orrery. Princeton's eighteenth-century planetarium, 1764–1954. A commentary on an exhibition held in Princeton University Library (Princeton, N.J., 1954), ch. 11 (“Orreries in England”).

Maddison Francis , “An Eighteenth-Century Orrery by Thomas Heath and some earlier Orreries”, The connoisseur, cxli, no. 569 (April, 1958), 163–7.

Such an assertion can be found, for example, even in the work of such an eminent expert in the field of historical astronomical instruments as Ernst Zinner. See his Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Coppernicanischen Lehre (Erlangen, 1943), 393.

Bacmeister Jean , Essai sur la Bibliothèque et le Cabinet de Curiosité et d'Histoire Naturelle de l'Académie des Sciences de Saint Petersbourg (St Petersburg, 1776).

Bakmeister Johann , “Versuch über die Bibliothek und das Naturalienkabinet der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in St. Petersburg”, St. Petersburgisches Journal, iii (St Petersburg, 1777), 12–44. 81–128, 169–84, 323–56, 420–44.

Bakmeister Iogan , Opyt o biblioteke i kabinete redkostei i istorii natural'nol Sanktpeterburgskoi imperatorskoi Akademii nauk. Perevod Vasiliya Kostygova (St Petersburg, 1779).

Belyaev Osip , Kabinet Petra Velikogo [The Cabinet of Peter the Great] (St Petersburg, 1793; 2nd ed. 1800).

Bakmeister , op. cit. (French ed., 181; German ed., 334; Russian ed., 135); Belyaev , op. cit. (1st ed., ii, 106; 2nd ed., ii, 251–2).

Belyaev , op. cit. (2nd ed., ii, 251–2).

Procès-verbaux des séances de l'Académie Imperiale des Sciences depuis sa fondation jusqu'à 1803, iii (1771–85) (St Petersburg, 1900), 192–3.

Rukopisnye materialy I. P. Kulibina v Arkhive Akademii nauk SSSR [Documents of I. P. Kulibin in the archive of the Academy of sciences of the USSR] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1953), 495.

Price Derek J. , “The Early Observatory Instruments of Trinity College, Cambridge”, Annals of science, viii, no. 1 (1952), 1–12.

State Hermitage. Section of the history of Russian culture, no. TKh–1251.

Chenakal V. L. , “Astronomicheskaya observatoriya Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk v kontse tridtsatykh godov XVIII veka” [The astronomical observatory of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences at the end of the 1730s] Istoriko-astronomicheskie issledovaniya, ii (Moscow, 1956), 141–52.

Chenakal V. L. , “Oborudovanie astronomicheskoi observatorii Peterburgskoi Akademii nauk lomonosovskogo vremeni” [The equipment of the astronomical observatory of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the time of Lomonosov] Astronomicheskii zhurnal, xxviii (1951), 301.

State Hermitage. Section of the history of Russian culture, no. TKh–1255.

Price , op. cit., 9–10, fig. 3(b).