WAS INVENTOR OF THE SEXTANT.
Thomas Godfrey Got a Valuable Idea by
Noting the Reflection of the Sun
from a Pail of Water.
Thomas Godfrey was probably the first self-made man in America. Born in 1704, he died in 1749. He was a glazier by trade, but he had naturally an interest in mathematics, and he learned Latin in order that he might read certain scientific treatises.
His reputation rests on an improvement which he made in the quadrant of John Davies. What Godfrey really did was to invent the sextant. John Hadley also invented a sextant, evidently carrying out a suggestion of Newton's which was found in Sir Isaac's original draft among Hadley's papers after his death. Godfrey antedated Hadley by about one year, but for a long time his claims were not recognized, and Hadley received all the credit.
How the humble glazier received his first inspiration to design the instrument of so great use to mariners is an interesting story. One day, while replacing a pane of glass in a window of a house on the north side of Arch Street, in Philadelphia, opposite a pump, a girl, after filling her pail, placed it upon the sidewalk. Godfrey, on turning toward it, saw the sun reflected from the window on which he had been at work, into the bucket of water, and his philosophic mind seizing upon the incident, was thus led to combine the plan of an instrument by which he could draw the sun down to the horizon, by a contrivance incomparably superior to any that had ever before been used for the purpose of ascertaining angular measurements.
EUROPEAN MONARCHS WHO SMOKE TOBACCO.
KING EDWARD'S BRIER-ROOT PIPE.
Almost All the European Monarchs Indulge
in Cigars, Pipes, or Cigarettes,
Except King Oscar of Sweden.
King James I of England, that "wisest fool in Christendom," was a monarch who inveighed against the "Virginia weed" in vain. His "Counter-blast Against Tobacco" was a famous book in its day. Yet to-day there is scarcely a king in Europe who does not smoke. The Paris Figaro has collected statistics as to smoking by royalty, and the Literary Digest translates the item:
The King of England almost always has a cigar in his mouth, but when with his intimate friends he puffs a short brier-root pipe. The Emperor of Germany is forbidden by his physicians to touch tobacco, but sometimes he lights a cigarette and throws it away when half smoked. King Carlos smokes superb cigars, golden-brown and fragrant, and of Portuguese make.