DAVID RITTENHOUSE. 51 



sum of two hundred pounds was obtained toward paying for 

 the instrument by means of lectures on astronomy delivered 

 by Rittenhouse's friend, the Rev. Dr. Smith, Provost of the 

 College of Philadelphia, concerning which the Rev. Dr. 

 Peters wrote, " The doctor in his introductory lecture was 

 honoured with the principal men of all denominations, who 

 swallowed every word he said with the pleasure that attends 

 the eating of the choicest viands, and in the close, when he 

 came to mention the orrery, he overexcelled his very self." 

 The members of the Assembly of Pennsylvania took a view 

 of the orrery, and, " being of the opinion that it greatly ex- 

 ceeds all others hitherto constructed, in demonstrating the 

 true Situations of the celestial Bodies, their Magnitudes, Mo- 

 tions, Distances, Periods, Eclipses, and Order, upon the prin- 

 ciples of the Newtonian System," voted the constructor three 

 hundred pounds in consideration of his mathematical genius 

 and mechanical abilities, and appointed a committee to agree 

 with him for a new orrery for the use of the public. This 

 purpose was not carried out. Mr. Rittenhouse became engaged 

 in public enterprises, which occupied his time till the begin- 

 ning of the Revolution, when all other interests were sus- 

 pended. 



The praises which were bestowed upon Mr. Rittenhouse for 

 his orrery were extravagant, and seem now even absurd ; but 

 nothing, perhaps, can more clearly illustrate the infantine con- 

 dition of American science at the time. 



Mr. Barton, by way of emphasizing the assertion that the 

 skill and accuracy he displayed in the construction of his mathe- 

 matical and astronomical instruments were not surpassed by 

 similar works of the most celebrated British mathematicians, 

 remarks that "his profoundness in. astronomical science and 

 his wonderful ingenuity, manifested in the construction of his 

 orrery, leave him without a rival in the twofold character of an 

 astronomer and mechanic." Dr. Jedediah Morse, in his Geog- 

 raphy (1789), noticing some of the more prominent produc- 

 tions of scientific ingenuity and skill in America, observed that 

 "every combination of machinery may be expected from a 

 country a native son of which, reaching this inestimable object 

 in its highest point, has epitomized the motions of the spheres 

 that roll throughout the universe." Mr. Thomas Penn, of 

 London, was surprised that the instrument could have been 



