All the tackle shops used to carry Calcutta blanks." In a day when surf fishermen can spend two, three even four hundred dollars on a top end surf rod, it's hard to imagine anyone fishing on the ...

N.J., made the first perfect split bamboo fishing-rod for the trade, but to Sam Phillippi, of Easton, Penn., belongs the honor of discovering the utility of the Calcutta bamboo cane for fishing-rods.

Calcutta cane was replaced by Tonkin cane ... perfected the split-cane fishing rod. This photograph, from the Marx Historical Room, Easton Area Public Library, is from James Alexander Henshall ...