Weems & Plath
In May of 1919, eight years before Lindberg's famous solos flight, three small planes set out from Newfoundland headed for London in an attempt to make the first trans - Atlantic flight. Only one of them made it. Twenty - five hundred feet below on board station tracking ship, a young navigator, Lt. Cdr. Philip Van Horn Weems, U.S. Navy gazed up and thought there must be a safer and simple way than using a small armada of ships as beacons for the flight. For centuries, man had relied on the heavens, on the circling planets and the constant horizon, to guide him in his travels. A compass, a sextant, and charts were the necessary tools for plotting a course, but these required time for computations and a place to spread out and study the charts. The timeworn system of celestial navigation was ill suited to the cockpit, but the airplane was here to stay. Lieutenant Commander Weems, a brilliant, inventive, and determined young man, knew as he trackled that first flight that navigation was his destiny and he went on to revolutionize the field with his ideas, writings, and inventions. The challenge he undertook was complex and involved the invention of new methods and new tools. It required a horizon system independent of the sea horizon that was often not visible from the cockpit of a plane. Weems worked for years to develop a new kind of sextant and to find someone to manufacture it. When an accurate timepiece was needed, Weems invented the Second Setting Watch with his inner rotating dial. He produced the famous Weems Plotter. Al his life Weems continued to improve the instruments and broaden the applications of his metods until they came include radio. He went on to establish his own school in Annapolis to teach the Weem System of Navigation. A century earlier, Carl Plath's company in Hamburg, C. Platrh, had been manufacturing the finest commercial sextants and magnetic compasses available. Plath developed the first gyrocompass installed on a commercial vessel in 1913. Weems school of navigation had become the purveyor of Weems' company to become the North American source for Plath's fine instruments also. Hence the alliance of two distinguished names Weems and Plath.Today Weems & Plath is still located in the Chesapeake Bay town of Annapolis where it began so many years ago.
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