Astronomer, Clockmaker, and President Of The American Philosophical Society

Early Years.

Benjamin Franklin's successor as president of the American Philosophical Society was David Rittenhouse, America's foremost scientist in the last part of the eighteenth century. Born near Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1732, Rittenhouse showed remarkable mechanical and mathematical abilities as a child. At seventeen he built a clock shop at the family farm. Clockmaking was his principal occupation for twenty years, although he also worked as a surveyor, establishing the official boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland (1763) and between New York and New Jersey (1769). His success as a clockmaker led him to other kinds of mathematical instruments. As a member of the American Philosophical Society he built an observatory at his farm. Later, at his home in Philadelphia, he built another, the first permanent astronomical observatory in America. It is also believed that Rittenhouse made the first...