WILSON, James, American globe maker: b. Londonderry, N. H., 1763; d. Bradford, Vt., 26 March 1855. Up to the age of 33 he was a farmer in his native place, at the same time reading and studying geography and astronomy. In 1796 he moved to Bradford, Vt., where he began experimenting with balls turned from blocks of wood and covered with paper. This rude beginning was followed by a much better method. The solid balls were thickly covered with layers of paper firmly pasted together and this shell was then divided into hemispheres, which being removed were again united and finished with due regard to lightness, strength and smoothness. He procured copper plates of sufficient size for his 13-inch globes, protracted his maps on them in sections, tapering as the degrees of longitude do from the equator to the poles and engraved them with such admirable accuracy of design, that when cut apart and dilly pasted on his spheres the edges with their lines and even the different parts of the finest letters would perfectly coincide and make one surface, truly representing the earth or celestial constellations. He published his first globes in
1814. When past 80 he constructed a machine which illustrated the daily and yearly revolu tions of the earth; the cause of the successive seasons; and the sun's place for every day of the year, in the ecliptic. These movements were produced by turning a crank, which caused the earth to revolve about the sun in the plane of the ecliptic, always retaining its true relative position. For want of a more definite name the machine was called Wilson's Planetarium. The large copper plate, on which are printed the months of the year, with their days and the corresponding signs of the zodiac with their degrees, was engraved by Wilson after he was 83 years of age.