But Dr. Smith says, and I believe it to be a true state of the case, that he himself gave a course of Lectures in Natural Philosophy, during the same winter, and that the money raised by them was also applied towards paying for the Orrery.

Rittenhouse was the perfect person to study the mysterious planet as he had a personal observatory on his family farm. In 1763 Mason and Dixon began a survey of the Pennsylvania-Maryland border but this work was interrupted in 1767. Hannah survived David by more than three years dying in late 1799.

David Rittenhouse (April 8 1732 – June 26 1796) was a renowned American astronomer inventor clockmaker mathematician surveyor scientific instrument craftsman and public official.