[3] He was the son of Jelte Eises from Easterlittens, a wool carder, and Hitje Steffens from Winsum.

Eisinga remained a wool carder throughout his life, while running his planetarium with the help of public support, and occasionally guest lecturing at the University of Franeker, which Napoleon ordered closed in 1811.

Reverend Eelco Alta, from Boazum, Netherlands, published a book in which he interpreted this as a return to the state of the planets at the day of creation and a likely occasion for Armageddon.

Alta predicted that the planets and the moon would collide, with the result that the earth would be pushed out of its orbit and burned by the sun.

The canonical view holds that Eisinga decided to build an orrery in his living room to prove that there was no reason for panic.

However, recent research indicates that this chain of causality is dubious, not least because Eijsinga appears to have commenced construction before the publication of Alta's book.

[7] The construction of the orrery saved Eijsinga a lot of time, however, because he no longer needed to calculate the planets' respective positions by hand.