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Biography of David Rittenhouse
Name: David Rittenhouse
Birth Date: April 8, 1732
Death Date: June 26, 1796
Place of Birth: Germantown, Pennsylvania, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: astronomer, instrument maker
David Rittenhouse
David Rittenhouse (1732-1796), American astronomer and instrument maker, was a noted amateur scientist who constructed the finest orrery made at that time.David Rittenhouse was born on April 8, 1732, near Germantown, Pa., into a poor farming family. He was stimulated by some books and tools of his uncle's and evidently educated himself in mathematics and astronomy. With help and encouragement from an Episcopal clergyman, he continued to advance his mathematical knowledge. In 1763 his boundary survey for Pennsylvania was so accurate that it was later accepted by the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.In 1767 Rittenhouse began his masterwork, the finest and most accurate orrery of that period. This mechanical representation of the movement of the planets through the universe was used widely in teaching and demonstration in the 18th century and also served as a demonstration of the reasonableness of nature. Rittenhouse's first orrery was capable of reproducing the relations of …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…he independently developed a system of calculus, but he did become mathematically sophisticated and made some contributions in this area.During the Revolutionary War, Rittenhouse was an avid patriot, serving on councils and committees of public safety, devising harbor defenses and methods of saltpeter production for gunpowder, and substituting iron weights in pendulum clocks to get lead for bullets. His last public service was as director of the U.S. Mint from 1792 to 1795. He died of cholera on June 26, 1796. He is often cited as an example of the untutored genius springing from American soil. Further Reading The best biography is Brooke Hindle, David Rittenhouse (1964). Edward Ford, David Rittenhouse: Astronomer-Patriot, 1732-1796 (1946), is also useful. For general background relating to Rittenhouse and the Jeffersonian circle see Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), and Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735-1789 (1956).Hindle, Brooke, David Rittenhouse, New York: Arno Press, 1980, 1964.
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