Focal Length: 31mm; ISO 400; Exposure: 1/50 sec @ f/16; Camera: Canon EOS 20D (Click to Enlarge)
Normally, I don’t like to take pictures of sculptures because I feel like I’m stealing someone else’s creation. But I really liked the way this statue of James Buchanan Duke looked with Duke Chapel in the background. James B. Duke’s father, Washington, founded the tobacco company that would eventually become the American Tobacco Company, which was the largest manufacturers of cigarettes in the world at one point. Eventually broken up by anti-monopoly ruling in the American courts, the company was the basis of James B. Duke’s immense wealth.
The American Tobacco Company was such a success because James licensed the first automated cigarette making machine from its inventor, James Albert Bonsack. By 1890, Duke supplied over 40% of the pre-rolled tobacco market in the United States. That wealth was to become the basis for the $40M Duke Endowment (approx. $430M in 2005 dollars), some of which went to Trinity College, which was renamed Duke University in honor of James’ father.
