Isaac Rice

Isaac Leopold Rice (February 22, 1850 – November 2, 1915) was a German-born American businessman, investor, musicologist, author, and chess patron. As part of a successful career in the manufacturing industry, in 1899 he acquired the Holland Torpedo Boat Company, which was renamed the Electric Boat Company and produced submarines for the U.S. and British navies. It continues today as General Dynamics Electric Boat.

Life and career Rice was born in Wachenheim, Bavaria, in 1850. When he was six years old , he emigrated to the United States with his mother, brother, and sister in 1856. They settled in Milwaukee, where his father, Maier Rice, was already established in business.

Rice was educated at Central High School in Philadelphia and at nineteen he was sent to Paris, where he studied music for three years.

In the practice of law he became more aware of and involved in the transportation business, mainly in the expanding railroad empires and their multiplying legal imbroglios. He was regarded in his time as one of the ablest specialists in railroad law in the United States, He became the first president of The Forum magazine, and later the Electric Storage Battery Co. (later Exide) in 1897.

Some of the numerous other companies Rice organized or was involved in included the Electric Vehicle Company, Car Lighting and Power Company, American Casein Company, and the Consolidated Rubber Tire Company.

The Isaac L. and Julia B. Rice House, a New York City landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places, currently Yeshiva Ketana of Manhattan

As president of Electric Storage, he became aware of the attempts (despite financial difficulties) since 1896 to deliver the first modern submarines for the US Navy, which ran on electric power while underwater. A year after the 1897 launch of their first vessel, the Holland VI, the management of John Philip Holland and Lewis Nixon (owner of the Crescent Shipyard in New Jersey, where Holland VI was built) found it difficult to finish making the last details operable and were running out of cash. Isaac Rice moved in, taking over and renaming the company as the Electric Boat Company on 7 February 1899. After a few months of negotiations and multiple tests, the United States Navy purchased Holland VI, renamed it USS Holland, and awarded the new company a contract to build its first fleet of s. Also in 1899, Rice added the Electric Launch Company (Elco) to his family of companies. Electric Boat was a founding company of General Dynamics Corporation, which is the company's Cold War progeny.

In 1902 he received from Bates College the honorary degree of LL.D.

The books published by Rice include: "What Is Music?" (New York, 1875), which was supplemented by "How the Geometrical Lines Have Their Counterparts in Music" (ib. 1880). The latter work was subsequently made part of the "Humboldt Library of Science." He also contributed a large number of articles to the Century, The Forum, of which he was a founder, His "intellectual partner" and an "accomplished musician", Julia B. Rice campaigned successfully against the horns and whistles of ships and founded the Society for Suppression of Unnecessary Noise (1907). Dorothy "Dolly",