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David Rittenhouse
3 quotes
“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.”
David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) first seen 1756 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Barton (Sep 20, 1756) as quoted by Florian Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890) p. 39.
“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.”
David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) first seen 1767 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Barton (Jan 28, 1767) as quoted by Florian Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States (1890) p. 39.
“The direct tendency of (Astronomy) is to dilate the heart with universal benevolence, and to enlarge its views.”
David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) first seen 1775 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Oration delivered February 24, 1775, before The American Philiosophical Society held at Philadelphia, for promoting useful knowledge in