Armand Spitz

Armand Neustadter Spitz (July 7, 1904 – April 14, 1971) was an American planetarium designer.

Armand Spitz, the son of Louis Spitz and Rose (Neustadter), was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cincinnati, without receiving a degree from either. In 1926 he began working as a journalist, and within two years purchased a newspaper in Haverford, Pennsylvania. This went bankrupt in 1934, and Spitz traveled to France, discovering an interest in astronomy on the voyage to Europe. On his return to the United States, he became a lecturer on astronomical topics at Haverford College. As a side effort he made a 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) papier-mache model of the Moon, which is on display to this day at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Spitz became a volunteer at the new Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia, doing publicity, but soon was allowed to do planetarium lectures. He also created a series of radio programs in which he covered scientific topics, with an emphasis on astronomy. His first book, The Pinpoint Planetarium, appeared in 1940. The first half of the book described the sky and legends attached to it. The last half of the book contained star charts to be punched out and held in front of lamps, projecting stars in their proper relationships onto a wall or other smooth clear surface.

Concerned that the only planetariums then available were so expensive that few institutions could have them and few people would live near enough to visit, in 1947 Spitz completed design work on a very inexpensive planetarium model. The main problem, he discovered, was that creating a globe for stellar projection was very complex and expensive. Following a suggestion by Albert Einstein, Spitz used a dodecahedron as the "globe" equivalent for his star projector.

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