Gobrecht was born on December 23, 1785, in Hanover, Pennsylvania, to Reverend John C. Gobrecht, who came to America from Germany in 1755, and Elizabeth Sands, with ancestry going back to 1642 in the Plymouth Colony [REF].
In addition to his professional activities, Gobrecht was an inventor, inventing the camera lucida, a talking doll, a kind of melodeon, and the medal-ruling machine, which reproduces relief on a plain surface [REF].