The Astronomical Playing Cards of 1829

Exhibit 037: Space instead of clubs and spades

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Welcome to the Museum of Cosmic Curiosities, a growing collection of strange objects, forgotten artefacts and obscure relics from the history of astronomy and space exploration. Some are profound, some are absurd, but they all have a story to tell.

🏛️ Exhibit 037 - The Astronomical Playing Cards of 1829

I am a big board gamer, with a penchant for card games too. So I was excited when I recently came across a set of beautiful 19th century playing cards adorned with celestial objects.

They are part leisure activity, part educational endeavour. The constellation cards tell you when each one is visible. The cards for objects like the Moon come with vital statistics such as diameter and distance from the Earth.

The cards also came with a guide to using them to play two different games called Conjunction and Combination. The games seem similar to Whist, with players competing in pairs through trick taking. The four suits are based on the seasons and the zodiac cards have a higher value than the others.

It was clearly an early piece of science communication, the author writing they hope to:

“excite the youthful reader to seek a more extensive knowledge of this noble science, or lead him to contemplate, with reverent admiration, the power and wisdom, — the harmony and magnificence, — displayed in the construction of the Universe.”

You can browse the full collection and the rules booklet online through the Yale Library.

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