The preeminent American scientist of his age, David Rittenhouse was at once an internationally famed astronomer, master craftsman of scientific instruments, surveyor and patriot. His mechanical models of the solar system, precision clocks, surveyor's theodolites, compasses, and optical lenses were of the highest order available in the world. Although he received little formal education and was a man of ordinary means, his genius was a primary force of colonial American achievements in science, known as the "Age of Enlightenment."
By 1767, Rittenhouse's achievements were already significant enough for the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) to grant him an honorary Master's degree, and for the American Philosophical Society to induct him into their membership. His gift to the College of a mechanical planetarium, or orrery, is still in the possession of the University.
Rittenhouse observed and recorded the transit of Venus across the sun in 1769 using his own precise surveying instrument. His records of those observations were distributed by the American Philosophical Society and brought the Society world-wide scientific recognition. His contemporaries thought so highly of him that he was their natural choice to succeed founder Benjamin Franklin as the Society's president after Franklin's death in 1790.
Rittenhouse surveyed many of the boundary lines of his own state of Pennsylvania including it's boundary with Delaware - an arc of twelve miles radius centered on the town of Newcastle. Along with Andrew Ellicott of Maryland and James Madison of Virginia, Rittenhouse represented Pennsylvania on the extension of the unfinished Mason-Dixon line to the Ohio country in 1784. Subsequently, he continued on as commissioner during the survey of the west boundary line of Pennsylvania, known as "Ellicott's Line". He also was called upon to establish the initial point of Pennsylvania's north boundary, defined as the parallel at 42 degrees north latitude.
During the Revolution, Rittenhouse served on the Committee of Safety, and was vice-president of the Council of Safety and president of the Board of War for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
After the Revolution, Rittenhouse was very active in public service as a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, state representative, state treasurer, professor of philosophy and trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.
Rittenhouse was also the Director of the United States Mint, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London.
Regarding these numerous public service obligations, Thomas Jefferson once respectfully asked Rittenhouse:
"There is an order of geniusses above [the] obligation…of government… You should consider that the world has but one Ryttenhouse, & that it never had one before… Are those powers… like air and light, the world's common property, to be taken from their proper pursuit to do the commonplace drudgery of governing, a work which my be executed by men of an ordinary stature…?