Leon Barritt


Leon Barritt was an American illustrator, cartoonist, journalist, and amateur astronomer. He produced a famous cartoon satirizing Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, co-invented with Garrett P. Serviss the Barritt–Serviss Star and Planet Finder, a popular star chart sold into the 1950s, and, after losing his artistic ability to paralysis, founded The Monthly Evening Sky Map magazine. Born in Saugerties, New York, he began as a news agent in his home town before moving to Boston to work as an engraver. After a year in Minnesota, he returned to New York in 1884, where he became cartoonist for the New York Press.