DISPLACING THE COMPASS.

Northland Age, Volume VIII, Issue 27, 23 February 1912, Page 8

DISPLACING THE COMPASS.

The magnetic needle is in danger of being displaced. The magnetic compass is easily deranged ; that is ita one great disadvantage. Itsrri a l ie the gyro-compass. This device,, as explained in “Chambers’s Journal,” carries a compass-card of the ordinary description, and ia placed similarly on the binnacle. The heavy disc is mounted within the machine

in a framework floating on mercury is such a way that the disc is kept absolutely vertical and the axis horizontal, ia accordance with the lines laid down by Foucault, the eminent French scientist. It is driven by means of a small electric motor at twenty thousand revolutions per minute. With this instrument the true geographical and not the magnetic north is indicated, while, moreover, it is not affected by the metal in the ship aft is the ordinary magnetic compass.

The gyro-compass is the invention of some German scientists, and in the land of its origin exhaustive tests have proved it to be so/ reliable that it is now being introduced into the German Navy. The British Admiralty propose to submit the invention to searching trials. The one obvious weak spot, according to the writer in “Chambers’s,” is the rotation of the disc. Should this fall below the critical speed it would become unreliable in operation, while dependence upon the eleetric motor might arouse misgivings. This is not the first attempt to supplant the ancient compass, and whether it will meet with any greater measure of success than other efforts in the same direction time alone can show.