The compassoldest known navigating instrumenthas been revolutionized. Last week Bendix Aviation Corp. announced a new automatic compass that makes the old magnetic needle* look as obsolete as a warrior's spear. The new "gyro flux gate" compass, designed especially for aircraft, is already at work guiding United Nations flyers unerringly to their targets.
For navigators, the traditional magnetic compass has the defect of being too crude. Despite modern refinements, it is still essentially a magnetized needle kept pointed north by the earth's magnetic field. It must be corrected constantly by tricky calculations, because of 1) interfering magnetic fields from surrounding metallic objects, and...
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