Founding Citizen: David Rittenhouse

This post is the first of a series I would like to do on the people who, while not actually being considered “Founding Fathers” nonetheless had a powerful impact on our early nation, helping to cement the American tradition of self-sufficiency, curiosity, invention, and pragmatic determination.

Who is David Rittenhouse? From Encyclopedia(dot)com:

Rittenhouse, the son of Matthias and Elizabeth Williams Rittenhouse, was raised on his father’s farm in Norriton, about twenty miles north of Philadelphia. His paternal ancestry was German Mennonite and maternal, Welsh Quaker, but no strong denominational loyalty was encouraged in his home. In his mature years, Rittenhouse maintained a Presbyterian Church membership. His education was largely informal, and he was regarded as self-taught. On 20 February 1766 he married Eleanor Coulston, by whom he had two daughters; following her death, he married Hannah Jacobs toward the end of 1772. Rittenhouse’s health was seldom good but seldom seriously impaired, the primary difficulty probably being a duodenal ulcer.

Of course, this quick biography doesn’t touch upon the many roles he played in Revolutionary-era America. Like many in those times, he was a polymath who made significant contributions in several different fields. Speaking specifically of his role as a scientist, he was interested in optics and telescopes and their use. From the same reference given above:

Astronomy was Rittenhouse’s primary scientific study, a pursuit to which he moved easily from his orreries, telescopes, and surveying. He began to study mathematics and science at an early age, first attaining recognition in the observation of the transit of Venus of 1769, which was important because of worldwide efforts to establish the sun’s parallax. On this occasion Rittenhouse emerged as the leading figure in the American Philosophical Society’s observations and in its initial volume of Transactions.

He made many of the instruments and assembled all of those used by the Norriton observation group; he carried through key related observations and projections and contributed to the best American calculation of the parallax. Rittenhouse established a Philadelphia observatory, where he kept daily records and conducted regular observations, publishing data and calculations on meteors, comets, Jupiter’s satellites, Mercury, Uranus (following its discovery), and various eclipses.

In calculating planetary orbits and positions, he worked out some solutions of his own. Rittenhouse’s mathematical work was largely related to the study of astronomy, his best paper being an original solution for finding the place of a planet in its orbit.

He also devised an arithmetical method for calculating logarithms and published a paper on the sums of (he several powers of the sines—an offshoot of a study of the period of a pendulum.

Like most of us, Rittenhouse also had to ply a trade of some kind for financial support, not being the son of a king or the inheritor of some barony. In his case, for over twenty years he made a living making clocks. From the same reference:

Rittenhouse was a maker of clocks and mathematical instruments. His long-case clocks were novel not in their mechanism but in their fine workmanship. Three included small orreries, one had only a single hand, and his astronomical clock used a compensation pendulum of his own design. His masterpieces in clockwork were two large orreries in which he achieved beauty and a high degree of precision.

Rittenhouse’s instruments, many of which have been preserved, were superior to those previously produced in America. He made surveyors’ compasses, levels, transits, telescopes, and zenith sectors as well as thermometers, barometers, at least one hygrometer, and occasional eyeglasses.

He made early use of spider webs for cross hairs in telescopes, and he erected a collimating telescope in his observatory. Rittenhouse’s fine surveying instruments were used for laying out national boundaries years after his death. Because he constructed vernier compasses, they became known in America as Rittenhouse compasses; and his improvement on Franklin’s Pennsylvania fireplace was called the Rittenhouse stove.

Lest we think that Mr. Rittenhouse was a science nut who only tinkered with things, he was also (ahem) instrumental in forming the literal shape of the early American nation. From Britannica:

Rittenhouse was highly esteemed as a surveyor; he supervised the establishment of the boundaries between Pennsylvania and Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and the Northwest Territory, and parts of those between New York and New Jersey and between New York and Massachusetts.

He also served in several government positions of note. From Britannia again:

Rittenhouse was the treasurer of the state of Pennsylvania from 1777 to 1789. In 1792 Pres. George Washington appointed him the first director of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, a position he held for three years. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1795 and served as president of the American Philosophical Society from 1791 until his death.

Think again over that bland little statement from the Encyclopedia Britannia: “Rittenhouse was the treasurer of the state of Pennsylvania from 1777 to 1789.” Those are the first years of a brand-new country attempting to recover from the costs of a war against the greatest military power of that century. How difficult might the job of managing Pennsylvania’s treasury have been? For a maker of telescopes and surveying instruments?

It was a job that had to be done, and this new American stood up when called and did it, regardless of the impact it undoubtedly had upon his lifelong ulcer.

As can be found in many of our lives, irony was also found hovering near David Rittenhouse. One of his clocks, now owned by the National Museum of American History, has lead weights driving the mechanism. This is interesting because (emphasis mine):

The lead weights, according to oral tradition, survived the Revolution while most others did not. Probably because they sympathized with the British, the family that owned the clock hid the weights in a well to avoid having them melted down for shot. Ironically, Rittenhouse was one of those responsible for the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety’s drive to procure ammunition during the war. His duties included collecting the lead clock weights commonly in use and replacing them with iron ones.

And so it goes, in Revolutions and the lives that live through them, doing extraordinary things as a matter of course.