The man who inserted the following notice was manifestly in earnest:
Whereas Mathew Burne of Chester County served John Camm two Years (that is ten or twelve months) at Stocking weaving and other work, during which time John Camms Stockings bore many Reflections and now the said Mathew Burne goes about Selling Stockings in John Camms name as though they were his make, which is false and not True.
For incoherence Mr. Camm's English is a match for the printed request which, within a few years, was attached to the doors of a hotel at Lexington, Ky.:
"Guests are respectfully requested, if either leaves the room before the other is up, to lock and bolt the door again immediately upon his departure."
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.