While looking for autographs we found this great page that lists all the U. S. Mint Directors from 1773 to present - great for collectors, researchers and historians of the U. S. Mint.

Credit for the success of the Mint belongs in great part to David Rittenhouse. In Philadelphia today, his name graces the city.s most fashionable address . Rittenhouse Square, about a mile west of the Historic District. Like Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram, he was one of those extraordinary men of early Philadelphia with diverse interests who made manifold contributions: he was a clockmaker, philosopher, surveyor, mathematician, politician and astronomer;

He determined the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland long before Mason and Dixon; many credit him with having built the first telescope made in the United States; he constructed an orrery, a device familiar mostly to astronomers and crossword solvers . it.s a clocklike mechanism that describes the position of the planets as they orbit the sun; and, he was director of the Mint for its crucial first three years.