Watson 1

Eric Watson, Saddleworth, England, 1986

Overall stand height 30" x 25" wide, brass case 13"h x 24"w

Case made by woodworker Stephen Casey, Santa Monica, CA in 1995. I found his firm archived on the internet but it is no longer reachable.

Brass case, fabricated by Fred Widman , Downers Grove, IL in 2024.

Replacement transport base and carry case fabricated by Fred Widman, Downers grove, IL 2024.

Below are the five orreries that Eric Watson had built between the years of 1976 though 1988

	Watson's first orrery was a tellurian, this model shows the Earth/Moon system. Mr. Watson had retired in 1976 and began to explore the idea of creating astronomical clocks and orreries. This was made c. 1978. Watson developed early on the design for the clockwork portion as well as the part of the orrery that would drive the Earth/Moon system, the epicyclic design had not yet been incorporated. The tellurian was driven directly from the clockwork without remontoire.
	This was Watson's first full orrery, c. 1981, and this design was the basic format used in all of his orreries going forward. Here he incorporated a remontoire , first designed by Henry Jeanneret in 1943 having a one second period and was designed for use in watches. This allows the heavy rotating armature as well as the over eighty wheels in the orrery section to be driven by the very large 2" x 2" x 0.2" spring in a 2.25 " diameter barrel. Also the outer planets of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are attached to the three very large 600+ toothed rings. Since the orrery armature upon which the Earth/Moon system is mounted rotates counterclockwise once per 365 days, there are three wheels mounted to the armature on the opposite side that rotate clockwise and mesh with the toothed rings netting out the speed for the far slower orbits of Mars, 1.88, Jupiter, 11.9 and Saturn, 29.5 years. Each model had some minor changes and features but the wheelworks were the same. This one was made on 'spec' in other words he had not had a commission for this one. At first he used full enamel dialing for the time and calendar dials, but took them off as he felt they obstructed the view of the movement. This is a concept I whole-heartedly agree. He built beautiful machines.
	His first full orrery, see above, was featured in the July 1982 Issue of the Horological Journal and was on television and exhibited in several horological shows including, the Prescott Museum, and the Northwest Arts an offshoot of the Arts council where he was awarded 500 BPS. He used that money to get his first orrery gold-plated, a feature which was on every succeeding orrery. Watson recalls a visitor to one of the shows where he said "I much appreciated the comment of one Lancaster gentleman who, after studying the orrery for some time, announced: Nobody could have made that." I know just what he meant. Having established his reputation he was able to obtain a commission before starting his next project. It was Watson's intention to build about five orreries in the decade of the 1980's. While this appears ambitious given the complexity of the machine, the fact that he kept the the design consistent made this possible. Remembering also, that he had built this with a manual Myford 4" lathe and mill. This third orrery (counting the tellurian), c. 1984 shows the time and calendar chapter rings and the same basic design as the machine built before. The fusee uses a metal wire. The base was similar in all the orreries he produced from this one forward. A hexagonal wood design with Ogee style sides and a drawer in front for the custom winding key and setting crank. He also provided a beautiful brass glazed case with a a front access door. The base and case then was contained in a 'carry case' made of wood. By the time this photo was taken in 2019 from a retailer in California the brass case was substituted for a glass case made from 1/2" thick glass and set upon a hexagonal plastic stand. The retailer indicated that the owner was also from the area. This idea for the substitution of the case Watson provided would prove to be a real headache for me when I purchased Watson's fourth orrery in 2021.
	This is Watson's fourth orrery, 1986, I obtained from an auction house in California in 2021. Along with the orrery I also got all the paperwork correspondence between Watson and the Mr. Herbert A. Gold, the person who commissioned it. This was very helpful in efforts to restore the machine. As found, the orrery could not work reliably, there were many tight spots, misaligned wheels and the grease Watson used in the spring barrel liquefied, and as the spring barrel is mounted vertically, seeped between the arbor and the barrel hole to form a massive congealed blob on the lower clock plate, see sections on restoration. The paperwork contains many photos of the machine as Watson was building it and these were very helpful. It turns out that Mr. Gold about a year after he received the orrery wrote complain about the grease leaking from the barrel. There was not much that could be done at point. Watson conceded that another clock he was building that was showing a similar problem. When delivered to Mr. Gold, Watson had provided a beautiful wood base and fitted brass glazed case. He kept this arrangement because he indicates that he was purchasing a Plexiglas floor stand very similar to the one seen for Watson's prior orrery, original invoice in the paperwork. It seems very coincidental that the owners of the third and fourth orrery came from California they may have known each other, hence the duplicate base idea. In January of 1994 Gold sold the orrery to Bill Taylor, also in California. Sometime after, Taylor had the Plexiglas base replaced with the wood stand seen opposite. It is beautiful, and signed by the maker, Stephen Casey, 1995. Unfortunately Taylor substituted the brass glazed case for one made from glued sections of 1/2" glass like the one above. Perhaps this was his idea of a more 'modern style'. Unfortunately, at 30" across, and 12" tall, this resulted in the glass weighing in at nearly 50 pounds and made removal of it for servicing or adjustments very difficult. The knob that was glued to the removable plate glass door fell off making me unsure of the integrity of the glue holding the rest of the case together; at this point, in 2024, the glue was 38 years old. Should one pick up the case and it collapse, the glass would damage the orrery. Furthermore the glass plus the orrery was way too heavy for the slim design of the stand; to prove the point the stand's legs continue past the table top to above the glass case to allow a 1/2" thick plastic top to be screwed in to try and stabilize the whole arrangement. It remained dangerously wobbly and the view from the top was spoiled from having to see through both the plastic stabilizer, which by now was a bit hazy, and the case glass, not to mention the dust and dirt that inevitably would lodge between. There was only a 1/2" space between so cleaning was impossible without removing the plastic top and risking the destabilization of the stand. Sometime after Taylor took delivery he sent the orrery in for repair. I could see where the former repair person made some mistakes, such as reassembling the remontoire incorrectly. He also did not correct the grease leakage problem, probably because he was not equipped to remove such a large spring from the barrel. The orrery was handled poorly with many fingerprints and the overall surface covered in grime. Apparently the machine was left out of the case for an extended period of time. I undertook to remedy these problems by performing a complete repair and restoration of the machine. Next I had the heavy, glued glass case replaced with a recreated brass glazed case and wood base with carry case, at considerable expense. Unfortunately the original brass case was lost and one can see from Watson's photo, left, how beautiful it was. Since the new case weighs in at only 16 pounds the the additional stabilizer pillars above the floor stand table were cut off and additional brass angle supports were added to the underside corners of the table top. A small change was made to the case dimensions. Originally all of the side panels were square, this resulted in the top pane of glass perched only 1/3" above the the Earth globe. I added an additional 1" resulting in a slight rectangular side panel; improving the visual presentation.
	This is Watson's fifth and last orrery. One can see that he decided to use contrasting black metal colors for some of the parts. He dispensed with the zodiac precession dial, which he intimated in his correspondence to Mr. Gold that he was not happy with as it covered too much mechanism. It can, he said be easily removed without harm to the functionality of the machine. Watson must have thought the sunrise/sunset dials first developed in the prior orrery were a good idea, and to my approval, moved those cams above the dials to make them more visible. He also dispensed with the standard/daylight savings time function. I believe he kept this orrery for himself for some time as it appears in the Horological Journal as being exhibited by him in Oldham in 1996. It was sold last at Sotheby's in 2015.
	This photo shows the paperwork that was produced between Mr. Gold, the commissioner, and Mr. Watson. Much of it is fairly intimate with humor and real camaraderie. The diagram to the left shows Mr. Watson's first ideas concerning the sun rise/sun set dial work and the beginnings of the zodiac precession dial work, both options requested by Gold. At this time he had yet to figure out the final design for the latter. In the end he devised a compound worm gear and cam to make this work. Gold also asked for a chain driven fusee, this being the only Watson orrery so equipped. The chain was subcontracted from Sinclair Harding. Having this paperwork not only helped me in the restoration of the orrery through the letters and photos Watson supplied to Mr. Gold, but is valuable historical artifact showing how such a fairly complex project evolves. I too have commissioned a complex clock and it is also fully documented on this website with hundreds of videos and thousands of pages, and is also on my YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/markfrankclocks.

One question I have is why did Watson stop at only four full orreries? It appears he had the publicity and commission orders waiting for these and he appears to have been able to produce these in 12 to 15 months. I do not know what his age was at the time. but he did indicate that in 1976 he had to quit his job for health reasons, hence the turn to his machining hobby resulting in these orreries. He also built a limited number of other small astronomical clocks. It is also interesting that much of his work went to the United States, and in particular, California.