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David Rittenhouse's map of the transit of Venus, published in the first volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Philadelphia, 1771.
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Map of the Transit of Venus From Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Philadelphia, 1769.

Credit: Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.

Elected to the American Philosophical Society (APS) in 1768, David Rittenhouse led the group of astronomers who observed the transit of Venus the following year. Rittenhouse's calculations of Venus's transit, done with a surveying device of his own design, won him international acclaim after their publication in the Society's Transactions, the first scientific journal published in North America. Between 1791 and 1796, Rittenhouse served as the president of the APS.

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