Roger Long was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

, and Master of Pembroke College

Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...

, Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 between 1733 and 1770.

Roger Long was the son of Thomas Long of Croxton, Norfolk. He was educated in Norwich before being admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...

 in 1696/7. Graduating BA in 1700/1, he became a fellow of Pembroke. He was ordained in 1716, and became Rector of Orton Waterville. He became a Doctor of Divinity in 1728, and Master of Pembroke in 1733. From 1750 until 1770 he was the first holder of the Lowndean Professorship of Astronomy

Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry

The Lowndean chair of Astronomy and Geometry is one of the two major Professorships in Astronomy at Cambridge University, alongside the Plumian Professorship...

.

One of the great characters of eighteenth-century Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, he built a "water-work" in his garden and paddled round it on a water-cycle. He also constructed a "zodiack", now considered to be the first planetarium

Planetarium

A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...

, a hollow sphere that could hold thirty people showing the movements of the planets and constellations which remained in the grounds of Pembroke until 1871.