Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio

Life & Legacy

Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio (about 1330 – 19 October 1388), also known as Giovanni de' Dondi, was a Venetian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer in Padua, now in Italy.
He was a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, which he designed and built over a period of sixteen years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed some sixty years after the first all-mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the planetary system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication.