History The earth inductor compass was first patented by Donald M. Bliss in 1912 and further refined in the 1920s by Paul R. Heyl and Lyman James Briggs of the United States National Bureau of Standards, and in 1924 by Morris Titterington at the Pioneer Instrument Company in Brooklyn, New York. Heyl and Briggs were awarded the Magellan Medal of the American Philosophical Society for this work in 1922. Designed to compensate for the weaknesses of the magnetic compass, the Earth inductor compass provided pilots with a more stable and reliable reference instrument. They were used in the Douglas World Cruisers in 1924 during the Around-the-World flight by the U.S. Army Air Corps. Charles Lindbergh used the compass on his transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. Over the transatlantic leg of his voyage - a distance of about - he was able to navigate with a cumulative error of about in landfall, or less than one percent of the distance travelled, by computing his position at hourly intervals by dead reckoning with the induction compass .
History The earth inductor compass was first patented by Donald M. Bliss in 1912 and further refined in the 1920s by Paul R. Heyl and Lyman James Briggs of the United States National Bureau of Standards, and in 1924 by Morris Titterington at the Pioneer Instrument Company in Brooklyn, New York. Heyl and Briggs were awarded the Magellan Medal of the American Philosophical Society for this work in 1922. Designed to compensate for the weaknesses of the magnetic compass, the Earth inductor compass provided pilots with a more stable and reliable reference instrument. They were used in the Douglas World Cruisers in 1924 during the Around-the-World flight by the U.S. Army Air Corps. Charles Lindbergh used the compass on his transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. Over the transatlantic leg of his voyage - a distance of about - he was able to navigate with a cumulative error of about in landfall, or about one half of one percent of the distance travelled, by computing his heading at hourly intervals for a dead reckoning estimate of position .
R
less than one
about one half of one
R
position
heading
R
by dead reckoning with the induction compass
for a dead reckoning estimate of position