The next Hellenistic source of which we must take note is a fragmentary and almost unintelligible chapter in the works of Hero of Alexandria. Alone and unconnected with his other chapters this describes a model which seems to be static, in direct contrast to all other devices which move by pneumatic and hydrostatic pressures; it may well be conjectured that in its original form this chapter described a mechanized rather than a static globe:
The World represented in the Centre of the Universe: The construction of a transparent globe containing air and liquid, and also of a smaller globe, in the centre, in imitation of the World. Two hemispheres of glass are made; one of them is covered with a plate of bronze, in the middle of which is a round hole. To fit this hole a light ball, of small size, is constructed, and thrown into the water contained in the other hemisphere: the covered hemisphere is next applied to this, and, a certain quantity of the liquid having been removed from the water, the intermediate space will contain the ball; thus by the application of the second hemisphere what was proposed is accomplished.
_Pneumatics_, XLVI, Woodcroft's translation.
It will be noted that these earliest literary references are concerned with pictorial, 3-dimensional models of the universe, moved perhaps by hand, perhaps by waterpower; there is no evidence that they contained complicated trains of gears, and in the absence of this we may incline to the view that in at least the earliest such models, gearing was not used.
The next developments were concerned on the one hand with increasing the mathematical sophistication of the model, on the other hand with its mechanical complexity. In both cases we are most fortunate in having archaeological evidence which far exceeds any literary sources.
The mathematical process of mapping a sphere onto a plane surface by stereographic projection was introduced by Hipparchus and had much influence on astronomical techniques and instruments thereafter. In particular, by the time of Ptolemy (_ca._ A.D. 120) it had led to the successive inventions of the anaphoric clock and of the planispheric astrolabe.[12] Both these devices consist of a pair of stereographic projections, one of the celestial sphere with its stars and ecliptic and tropics, the other of the lines of altitude and azimuth as set for an observer in a place at some particular latitude.