Invention Timeline - Thomas Godfrey, American; Inventor of the Quadrant in 1730
b. ? 1704 and d. December ? 1749
American inventor of the quadrant, 1730, an instrument for measuring angles by two reflectors on two arms jointed. The Royal Society decided that Hadley and Godfrey were independent inventors of the quadrant. Godfrey was a profound student of mathematics, through a glazier by trade.
How would you long to find yourself once more
Where the great waves go rolling up and down!
And the loud winds that spur their steaming flanks
The sailors buffet and their voices drown!
How would you wonder if the honest hand
That held you sunward on the heaving main
Had quite forgot the trick it knew of old,
And never so would manage you again!
—To A Quadrant: John W. Chadwick
1602—Just Byng invented the measuring compass.
1608—William Barlowe invented the compass-box and hanging compass.
1795, April 7—The meter was made the legal unit of length and the base of the metric system in France. It is one ten millionth part of the distance between the poles and equal to 3.2808 English feet.
1847—Belanger gave the name of impulse to the expression pt. and living power (kinetic energy) to mv²/2.
1879—Hopkins introduced graphical representations of indicator curves in dynamo and engine tests.
