Modeling a solar eclipse (and other phenomena, both celestial and terrestrial) in Joseph Harris&

Modeling a solar eclipse (and other phenomena, both celestial and terrestrial) in Joseph Harris’s The Description and Use of the Globes and the Orrery (London: B. Cole and E. Cushee, 1751).

A folding plate depicting an orrery, or mechanical model of the solar system, forms the volume’s frontispiece. To simulate a solar eclipse, Harris suggested using a lamp in place of the sun, then

… turning the Handle about, you’ll see when the Conjunction of the Moon happens. When she is in or near one of the Nodes, her Shadow will fall upon the Earth, and so deprive that Part upon which it falls of the Light of the Sun…

Here’s a reproduction of an 18th-century orrery in action: