PREFACE
The chapters composing this book originally appeared as a series of articles in The Engineer during January, February, and March of the current year. The articles were written in the belief that many readers would welcome a clear and full, non-mathematical exposition of the gyroscopic compass, its theory and practical construction. The gyro-compass represents at once the most involved and abstruse and the most important and valuable of all the practical applications to which the gyroscope, so far, has been put. As a navigational instrument it is now in practically universal use in all the chief war navies of the world, and is to-day being adopted by several important representatives of the mercantile marine. Remarkable figures were shown to the author recently which demonstrated that not only was navigation by the gyro-compass much more accurate than by the magnetic compass, but that the increased accuracy reduced the length of the voyage of a mercantile vessel to an extent that resulted in saving a quantity of fuel the value of which on a single trip would go a considerable way towards meeting the extra first cost of the gyro-compass. Bearing these facts in mind the author from the outset endeavoured not only to dispense with mathematics but to avoid introducing anything except the most familiar physical principles and conceptions, for his object was to explain the mode of action of the gyro-compass for the benefit primarily of the navigating officer—naval and mercantile. If some readers should find the treatment in places unduly prolix, the author trusts they will exercise leniency and regard the fault as being caused by the author’s unwillingness to take any risks in expounding a subject, no part of which can be understood incompletely without grave hurt to the understanding of the whole.
T. W. C.
London, May, 1920.