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Raising the aerocompass in early twentieth-century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2008

SOPHIA DAVIS
SOPHIA DAVIS
Affiliation:
Darwin College, Cambridge, CB3 9EU, UK. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This paper concerns the movement of the old navigational instrument, the compass, into the new situation of the aeroplane in the early part of the twentieth century. In order for the technology that had so long resided on ships or in the hand to continue to function in new contexts, a huge amount of work was required. Relationships were forged and made fraught, inventions were made to contest and succeed one another, new scientific and technical knowledge was produced. Throughout, the perceived nature of compasses and magnetic fields underwent subtle but significant shifts. Until recently histories dealing with the emergence of the aerocompass have largely black-boxed the technological changes, with only superficial treatment of issues lying beyond the compass itself.1 John Bradley's exploration of the feud between the Admiralty and military compass designers, and the sections in both Bradley's and A. E. Fanning's work on lawsuits over originality,2 go some way towards rectifying this imbalance. This paper extends that work further. It focuses on events in Britain, particularly those centred on two institutions, the Admiralty Compass Observatory at Ditton Park, Slough, and the Royal Aircraft Factory (later the Royal Aircraft Establishment) at Farnborough.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 73 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 British Society for the History of Science

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References

1 Flight Lieutenant W. L. Gillespie, ‘History of navigation instruments in the Royal Air Force’, thesis for No. 2 Specialist Navigation Course at Empire Air Navigation School, Shropshire, 1944, National Maritime Museum ACO collection, item N54; Captain H. L. Hitchins and Commander W. E. May, From Lodestone to Gyro-compass, London, 1952; M. D. Wright, Most Probable Position: A History of Aerial Navigation to 1941, Lawrence, 1972; Commander A. E. Fanning, Steady as She Goes: A History of the Compass, London, 1986; J. E. D. Williams, From Sails to Satellites: The Origin and Development of Navigation Science, Oxford, 1992; A. D. Aczel, The Riddle of the Compass, London, 2001; A. Gurney, Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation, London, 2004.

2 J. Bradley, ‘The history and development of aircraft instruments 1909 to 1919’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Imperial College London, 1994, 84–132; Fanning, op. cit. (1), 218–33.

3 See Winter, A., ‘“Compasses all awry”: the iron ship and the ambiguities of cultural authority in Victorian Britain’, Victorian Studies (1994), 38, 69–98Google Scholar; and also the early parts of Fanning, op. cit. (1) and Hitchins and May, op. cit. (1).

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9 For a history of aerial navigation focusing largely on the American story, as well as taking into account some British, French and German aspects, see Wright, op. cit. (1).

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22 For example, Wright, op. cit. (1), 46; and ‘A new gyroscopic turn-indicator’, Flight (1925), 53.

23 Captain F. O. Creagh-Osborne, The Magnetic Compass in Aircraft, 1915, 14, National Maritime Museum ACO Collection, item P12. This booklet was directed at pilots.

24 ACO report, op. cit. (8), 4.

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32 Unknown sender to Lieutenant Towers, 15 May 1916, National Maritime Museum ACO Collection, item N52. Towers also forwarded the letter to Creagh-Osborne on 7 August 1916.

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41 Creagh-Osborne, op. cit. (16).

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73 Creagh-Osborne, op. cit. (30), 6.

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