The company Weems & Plath is located in the Chesapeake Bay town of Annapolis, Maryland, where it was founded many years ago by Captain Phillip Van Horn Weems. Capt. Weems was a leading navigator of his time, teaching at the US Naval Academy and later from a navigation school he founded. Charles Lindberg studied with Weems before attempting his solo trans-Atlantic flight. Admiral Byrd, a classmate of Weems at the Naval Academy, came to him for instruction before setting out for the North Pole. A century earlier, Carl Plath's company in Hamburg, Germany, began manufacturing commercial sextants and magnetic compasses. The company developed the first gyrocompass installed on a commercial vessel in the year 1913. In 1928, Captain Weems became the North American distributor of C. Plath instruments, and hence the alliance of the two names into Weems & Plath. The company remains today a leading manufacturer of precision marine navigation instruments.