SKETCH OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE. 835 



SKETCH OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE. 



66 A S a. citizen of Pennsylvania/' says William Barton, in the 

 -j- preface to his "Memoirs of the Life of David Ritten- 

 house"; "as an inestimable public and private character; as a 

 distinguished son of science, of great probity and extensive use- 

 fulness in society in all these points of view, the history of Dr. 

 Rittenhouse may be contemplated as holding a relationship with 

 almost every object connected with science and art in his day 

 that could in any way contribute to the well-being of mankind in 

 general and his native country in particular." He, in fact, ac- 

 quired a fame in the period of the infancy of American science, 

 the nature and extent of which can hardly be realised in this 

 day ; and his gifts, then regarded as extraordinary, were always 

 freely placed at the service of the public. 



David Rittenhouse was born in Roxborough Township, near 

 Germantown, Pa., April 8, 1732, and died in Philadelphia, June 

 26, 1796. He was descended from a family of paper-makers resid- 

 ing at Arnheim, Guelderland. His great-grandfather, William 

 Rittenhouse, a Mennonite preacher, came from Holland with his 

 family in 1687-'88 ; was the first Mennonite minister in Pennsyl- 

 vania ; and established the first paper-mill in this country, at the 

 spot where David was born. 



David was early put to work on the farm, and was plowing at 

 fourteen years of age. An uncle dying had left him a chest of 

 tools and a few books on arithmetic and geometry, with some 

 manuscript mathematical calculations. These furnished pala- 

 table food to his mind, and his biographers tell of his having cov- 

 ered the handle of his plow and the fences around the field with 

 his workings of the problems which they set before him. As the 

 uncle mentioned above was his mother's brother, it is inferred 

 that he inherited his genius from his mother's side. His mechani- 

 cal talent was shown in his construction of a complete water-wheel 

 in miniature when eight years old, a wooden clock when seventeen, 

 and a clock with metallic works at a later age. His father was not 

 disposed at first to favor the youth's tastes, but eventually he fur- 

 nished him with money enough to buy a set of clock-making tools ; 

 and David built a workshop at Norriton, whither the family had 

 removed, where he carried on the clock-making business for several 

 years. He at the same time pursued his studies so diligently that 

 he impaired his constitution, and contracted a pain that afflicted 

 him all his life. Astronomy appeared to be his favorite study ; 

 and he was interested in optics and mechanical science. He dis- 

 covered himself, independently, the method of fluxions, of which, 

 in his imperfect knowledge of what Newton and Leibnitz had 



