Isaac Rice

Isaac Leopold Rice (February 22, 1850 – November 2, 1915) was a German-born Jewish American businessman, investor, musicologist, author, and noted chess patron. In 1899 he absorbed 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.

Rice was born in Wachenheim, Bavaria, in 1850; he emigrated to the United States with his mother in 1856. He was educated at the Central High School in Philadelphia and at nineteen he was sent to Paris, where he studied music for three years. While there he sent stories to the Philadelphia newspapers for printing. In 1868 he moved to England, where he became a teacher of music and languages. On his return to America a year later he moved to New York City and practiced music before going back to school to become a lawyer. After graduating from Columbia College of Law in 1880 he practiced law for the rest of the decade.

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, and held large investments in several lines, including the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and Reading Railroad.

He was invited to start a publishing company by some associates in the music printing societies. In the 1890s he was looking to move and diversify and possibly invest early in emerging companies with a potential for growth. In 1892 he bailed out the bankrupt Electro-Dynamic Company in partnership with William Woodnut Griscom. He became the first president of The Forum magazine, and later the Electric Storage Battery Co. (later Exide) in 1897.

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