During World War II Rines served as an Army Signal Corps officer and helped develop the Microwave Early Warning System.
He was the founder of the Franklin Pierce Law Center, a private law school located in Concord, New Hampshire, and the Academy of Applied Science, a Massachusetts and New Hampshire based organization dedicated to stimulating the interest of high school students in science, technology, and inventions.
[citation needed] His philanthropic activities included establishing the GREAT Fund, providing educational grants for a large extended family in perpetuity.
[3] During a visit to Scotland in 1972, Rines reported seeing "a large, darkish hump, covered ... with rough, mottled skin, like the back of an elephant" in Loch Ness.
Over the next 35 years he mounted numerous expeditions to the loch and searched its depths with sophisticated electronic and photographic equipment, mostly of his own design.