American astronomer (*1732 – †1796)
David Rittenhouse (April 8, 1732 – June 26, 1796) was a renowned American astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, and public official. Rittenhouse was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the first director of the United States Mint.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
I do not design a machine which will give the ignorant in astronomy a just view of the solar system, but would rather astonish the skilful and curious observer by a most accurate correspondence between the situations and motions of our little representatives of our heavenly bodies and the situations and motions of those bodies themselves. I would have my orrery really useful by making it capable of informing us truly of the astronomical phenomena for any particular point of time, which I do not find that any orrery yet made can do.
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I have no health for a soldier, and as I have no expectation of serving my country in that way, I am spending my time in the old trifling manner, and am so taken with optics, that I do not know whether, if the enemy should invade this part of the country, as Archimedes was slain while making geometrical figures on the sand, so I should die making a telescope.