39
votes
The first really new compass since 1936 (a new, public domain design without liquid in the dial)
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- Title
- The first really new compass since 1936 - I invented a new type of compass
- Authors
- The Map Reading Company
- Duration
- 20:06
- Published
- Jan 1 2026
(Summary of my best understanding of the video)
The Problem: compass needles will overshoot their equilibrium position and take time to settle into a north-south orientation when used. Modern compasses address this by damping the oscillation, either with liquid (which brings the complication of bubbles forming in extreme conditions) or via eddy currents (requiring a metal backing plate that obscures the map when in use).
This guy has engineered a copper ring for the compass perimeter that allows the user to see through the face of the compass while also providing damping through eddy currents. No bubbles, no obscuration of the map. Best of both worlds. It's such a simple solution I can't believe it hasn't been tried before.
The specifics are part of why it hasn't been seen yet. How many combinations of ring diameters and copper alloys did he have to test to get the best result? That's a lot of testing to do when existing compasses already sell well. I purchased 3 or 4 Silva 1-2-3 compasses through 12 years in the BSA as a youth, they worked well and were cheap enough to be replaced when they inevitably broke due to lack of care. Everyone had one, especially on backpacking or hiking trips when we had a paper map. More recently I finally bought myself an upgraded model, partially to satisfy the desires of my inner child. Existing fluid-dampened compasses are cheap enough to make and popular enough that there's already plenty of profit without having to do research or even modify existing product lines.
I will say that the demonstration at 12:18 was genuinely impressive. While I don't get the same oscillation as the undampened needle, seeing the new system lock in almost immediately felt unnatural. I assume other eddy-dampened compasses stop just as quickly, but this is the first I've actually observed so the effect was new to me. Couple that with the convenience he mentions (which is why I've never felt the need to look outside of plastic compasses) and I absolutely see the appeal of his invention.
Not a channel or a topic I know much about at all, but it made me smile to see a slightly grainy, poorly lit video of someone actually pushing the state of the art in his field! There's something of the old internet to it that I enjoyed.
Simple improvements for well known, ubiquitous objects are always really satisfying to me - and his decision to immediately put it in the public domain is exactly the kind of altruism that deserves to be celebrated.
This problem is significant in aviation - in a non-glass panel airplane we periodically sync a gyroscopic direction indicator to the wet compass to allow us to turn onto headings accurately. Without a gyro we’re forced to “undershoot north/overshoot south” (UNOS) in turns to take account of the lead/lag that the compass is subject to. One less instrument means a simpler instrument panel. Cool solution!
Pretty cool, and a noble idea... but is simply announcing "I'm releasing this design to the public domain" enough to actually do so? IANAL but I would have assumed you need to hold a patent first, so that you can prove you actually own the design and there are no prior patents owned by others using the same idea, before you could then release the design into the public domain.
It's a good question, actually! My understanding is that you have an absolute ability to disclaim IP rights to your own design (i.e. to release it into the public domain), but the onus would be on anyone else using that design to satisfy themselves that their specific use of that design doesn't then coincidentally infringe on anyone else's IP.
As far as I know, the concept of a work being in the public domain is more of a descriptor for the absence of any active copyright / patent / trademark protections than it is a protection in and of itself. Publicly marking your own work as public domain is a clear way to make sure there's no ambiguity on your intent: you're forfeiting any claim you might otherwise have, including ones that are automatically given (like copyright, in situations where that's applicable), but it's something of a shorthand because as you say, you can't really prove the absence of any other claims on it without the formal process to do so.
We're stretching the boundaries of my own knowledge here, but I think that patenting the work first would technically not be putting it in the public domain - it's legal semantics, but the existence of the patent would specifically preclude that (although I imagine anywhere outside a court case, people would still use the term "public domain" as a good enough description!). You'd be giving a global, zero cost, zero limitation license to that patent instead. Which would arguably be even better, it'd be pre-emptively and actively protecting against competing claims, but obviously costs a decent amount of time and money.
As it is, he's passively prevented any future patent applications by creating and publishing clear prior art, and he's made a (probably) binding statement to assure anyone using the idea that he won't later try to assert a claim on it. If anyone else believes they have a claim that supersedes his, the onus is now on them to raise that with anyone who chooses to manufacture a product based on the idea.
...i believe that back during bush-the-lesser's administration, the USPTO changed their standard of novelty from prior art to first-to-file, which effectively means that nothing can be safely released into the public domain without filing for a patent first...
I'm a little rusty on this, but as far as I know the difference between first-to-invent and first-to-file only affects the date that takes precedence in case of a dispute, rather than the rules about what is or isn't patentable. It's not that you have to file, it's just that if anyone does file then the filing date is what matters when comparing to other patents or to prior art, even if they have proof that the invention date was meaningfully earlier than that.
Published prior art like this still blocks any future patents, and it's arguably actually safer to rely on in a first-to-file system because the only thing that needs to be proven is that the publication date of the prior art is earlier than the filing date of the patent (i.e. you can't end up in a dispute around the specific invention date with both parties pointing at invoices from their material suppliers and manufacturing partners to support exactly how many days prior to filing/publication the invention was actually invented). But yeah, the name is definitely misleading - it makes it sound like filing first is a guaranteed win rather than a win only if the idea was patentable at the time of filing.