There are disputes in history that are obviously doomed to finding the wrong answer in any case, because they are based on an uncorrectable error. One of these arose quite recently, since humanity acquired a global positioning system: which is more accurate - a digital compass or a magnetic one? People asking this question obviously did something wrong in school geography lessons…Here is the first clarification of the question: which pole do you want to go to?
The answer seems to suggest itself. Even obvious ignoramuses from those geography workshops, when Adrianov’s compass (now a rare thing, by the way), served as a device for orientation on the ground, willy-nilly learned that the blue end of the compass needle always points north. So, to the North Pole. Accordingly, the red end - to the south.
Logical, but wrong. Such an answer would have been appropriate, say, in the 18th century, when the sphericity of the Earth had already been proven, but none of the researchers had yet looked at its top and "opposite" side. However, in his youth, the history of the compassdid not know any poles at all. It's just that, starting from the ancient Chinese, they noticed that a magnetized iron needle points in one direction all the time, and used this in navigating on land and at sea. And when the compass came to Europe in transit through the Arabs in the 13th century, ship captains were initially wary of using the novelty - they were afraid that they would be accused of witchcraft. But when they figured out what was what, the era of the Great geographical discoveries began, for which the compass rightly entered the list of the greatest inventions of the human mind. And in the 19th century, with an interval of 10 years, the British polar explorer John Ross and his nephew James reached, respectively, the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth. And they immediately determined that they did not coincide with the geographic poles.
Later it turned out: not only that - they also drift on the earth's surface. Behind them, not like a digital compass, a magnetic one will not keep up. Their average speed of movement is 10 kilometers per year. For about three and a half centuries, the north magnetic pole wandered across the territory of Canada, and in the second half of the last century, suddenly, with a "terrible" speed (in 2009 - 64 kilometers a year!) Rushed to Russia, to the Taimyr Peninsula. So now the magnetic compass needle, if you follow it exactly, will take you to the Arctic ice pack, to a point with coordinates 85 degrees 54' minutes north and 147 degrees east longitude. Now that we figured it out, let's figure out how a digital compass works, it's also electronic. No magnets here, of course,not required. Based on signals from GPS or GLONASS satellites, the receiver determines its location, overlays data on the coordinate grid of the map and immediately shows the direction to the north on the screen, but in this case - already to the geographic pole.
All other functions of the electronic device are determined by its purpose. The most advanced ones help to lay and remember a dozen routes with hundreds of checkpoints, measure the distance traveled and speed, count the steps taken, and at the same time the calories that were burned at the same time. In all honesty, this is not even a compass, but a navigator.
And here it is important to clarify the question of which digital compass you mean a second time. Since there are devices that use biaxial magnetic resistors for orientation to the cardinal points. In principle, they are the same classical compasses that check the direction to the poles according to the Earth's magnetic field. With all that follows. But, dear lovers of electronic things, what will you do if all this machinery fails or is left without energy? Wouldn't the good old magnetic compass come in handy in this case?
