Ritty 's early academic record was unremarkable. He used a microscope to study the natural world and he would sometimes take his chemistry set into the street to perform tricks for other children. One of his proudest inventions was a homemade burglar alarm that alerted him whenever his parents entered his room. His lab was an old wooden packing box, equipped with shelves that contained a storage battery and an electric circuit of light bulbs, switches and resistors.
In the late 1920s, a young working-class boy nicknamed Ritty spent most of his time tinkering in his 'laboratory' at his parents ' home in Rockaway, New York.
