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The U.S. Mint has had many directors over the last few centuries. Most geniuses in their own right. But none were as interesting or as celebrated as the original Mint director, David Rittenhouse. He was a celebrated astronomer, mathematician and inventor.  Many interesting facts about him are below.
*Rittenhouse was born in Philadelphia, PA on April 8th, 1732. When he was a young boy, his uncle passed away and left him his carpentry tools and instructional books. Rittenhouse started crafting scale models of the buildings around him that were quite incredible.
*He mastered Newton’s Law of Motion and Gravity and the ripe old age of 13. His intelligence started to get noticed.
*At 19, he obtained a scholarship to Rutger’s University in New Jersey because of 2 solar system models he made for them.
*Rittenhouse was the first in the U.S. to build a telescope. He used it to monitor/record the transit of Venus over the sun. The same thing that we just witnessed last week!
*He was the first American to see the planet Uranus in 1781.
*Rittenhouse helped establish border lines for several states including New York and Pennsylvania.
*He used observations from the transit of Venus to calculate the distance between earth and the sun to be 93 million miles.
*He became the Treasurer of Pennsylvania in 1777. Because of this, and George Washington’s urging, Rittenhouse became the first U.S. Mint Director on April 2, 1792.
*He was known as believing that coins were artwork.
*The first coins Rittenhouse himself struck were made from Washington’s own flatware. They were a test and were then given to Washington as a gift.
*Rittenhouse resigned as Mint Director on June 30th, 1795 because of his failing health. He passed away a year later in 1796.
