The Handy Compass

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 22, 1911

The Handy Compass

I FIND that there are still people who, when lost or “turned around,” will say: “I wonder which way is north? How I wish I had a compass! Then I could surely tell.”

Now, every boy ought to know that a watch is just as good a compass as it is a timekeeper. In fact, I would rather trust to a watch than to a compass if life depended upon my finding my way; for a watch can not be deflected by a foreign substance as a compass can. Given only one condition,—ability to see the sun or the place where the sun is,—and you can trust a watch to tell you the absolute truth about the points of the compass. It is as reliable as the sun itself.

Now, to explain how a watch may be used as a compass: All you have to do is to point the hour-hand to the sun, wherever the hour-hand may be at the time, and south will always be exactly half-way between it and the figure twelve on the watch dial. Try it any time of day, and wherever you may happen to be, and you will find this method of determining north and south will never fail to work with the most perfect accuracy. The only difference between using the watch and using the compass is that you must remember that with the watch you find south instead of north.

We will suppose that it is ten o’clock in the morning. The sun is pretty well up in the sky, and as you point your hour-hand toward it, you will see at once that the figure eleven, half-way between ten and twelve, indicates the true north and south line. It will be the same anywhere, no matter in what section of the world you may be.

Even in cloudy weather you can often locate the sun by the delicate shadow from your open knife blade when you hold the knife upright on your palm. You will be surprised to see how often, on a cloudy day, you can determine the position of the sun by this experiment.

This method of finding the points of the compass is called “orientation by the sun.”—Selected.