page_title: Isaac Doolittle
hierarchical_section_title: Isaac Doolittle
caption_attribution_description: English: Brass engraving "medallion" element taken from the engraved brass clock-face of a Colonial American 1770s Hall Clock designed and crafted by brass clock and scientific instrument maker Isaac Doollittle of New Haven, Connecticut, USA. In addition to the elegant text script, the outer ring of the medallion has an carefully engraved series of feathered arrows in a clockwise direction set above the dial face of the clock.
context_page_description: Isaac Doolittle was an early American inventor, engineer, manufacturer, militia officer, entrepreneur, printer, politician, and brass, iron, and silver artisan. Doolittle was a watchmaker and clockmaker, known for making and selling at his shop in New Haven, Connecticut one of the first brass wheel hall clocks in America, where he also crafted and sold scientific instruments, and is regarded as "the first native practitioner" of silversmithing in the Connecticut Colony. He was also an engraver and printer of both legal forms and currency, and became the first American to design, manufacture, and sell a printing press in 1769. Somewhat late in life, he became a successful self-educated bell-foundryman, learning the difficult craft of casting large metal bells.
  An important figure in the religious life of Connecticut as an Episcopal Churchwarden and co-founder of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Doolittle was also an active Patriot during the American Revolution. Perhaps his most notable contribution is his having designed and crafted in 1775 the moving and brass parts for David Bushnell's submersible vessel Turtle, the first submarine used in combat.
context_section_description: Isaac Doolittle (August 3, 1721 – February 13, 1800) was an early American inventor, engineer, manufacturer, militia officer, entrepreneur, printer, politician, and brass, iron, and silver artisan. Doolittle was a watchmaker and clockmaker, known for making and selling at his shop in New Haven, Connecticut one of the first brass wheel hall clocks in America, where he also crafted and sold scientific instruments, and is regarded as "the first native practitioner" of silversmithing in the Connecticut Colony. He was also an engraver and printer of both legal forms and currency, and became the first American to design, manufacture, and sell a printing press in 1769. Somewhat late in life, he became a successful self-educated bell-foundryman, learning the difficult craft of casting large metal bells.
  An important figure in the religious life of Connecticut as an Episcopal Churchwarden and co-founder of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Doolittle was also an active Patriot during the American Revolution. Perhaps his most notable contribution is his having designed and crafted in 1775 the moving and brass parts for David Bushnell's submersible vessel Turtle, the first submarine used in combat. In crafting the watch work triggering mechanism for Bushnell's explosive underwater magazine, Doolittle created the first mechanical time bomb, while his two-blade propeller was the first practical and applied use of a propeller in watercraft.
  Doolittle was well known in his time as an "ingenious mechanic", or what would be called an engineer today. His legacy is widespread in numerous forms of American industry and craftsmanship, and his many pioneering innovations are often associated with the popular notion of Yankee ingenuity.
caption: Signature medallion from brass clock face of an Isaac Doolittle hall clock, c. 1770
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