First printed as articles in The Engineer, this book explains why a spinning wheel, mounted aboard a ship, comes to point at true north. Chalmers begins with elementary gyroscopic behaviour and the earth’s rotation, then compares the damping systems of the Anschütz, Sperry and Brown compasses, with attention to latitude and speed errors.
A lucid account of the instrument that transformed naval navigation in the years around the First World War. Download the free EPUB.