The Geneva Sphere: An Astronomical Model from Seventeenth-Century Japan.

Abstract

An object has come to light which appears to be a clockwork driven model of the cosmos made in seventeenth-century Japan. The contemporary textual sources describing such devices are discussed, and the origins of the model's technical features are identified. These include what appear to be Japanese appropriations of technologies brought to Japan by Jesuit missionaries in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Comparisons are made with related developments outside Japan.