compass card

American  

noun

Navigation.

1. a circular card with magnets attached to its underside, the face divided on its rim into points of the compass, degrees clockwise from north, or both, and floating or suspended from a pivot so as to rotate freely.

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compass card British  

noun

1. a compass in the form of a card that rotates so that "0°" or "North" points to magnetic north

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Etymology

Origin of compass card

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

compass card

I actually prefer trying to hold a number on its screen rather than trying to keep a compass card in alignment.

From Time Magazine Archive

But they never look at the instrument board on a line run without seeing on the compass card a sharp reminder of a TWA deficiency: all its routes run east and west.

From Time Magazine Archive

The bos'un did not think so, and casting an eye aloft at the canvas now beginning to fill, and then at the compass card, prepared to air his theory of the malady.

From In Strange Company A Story of Chili and the Southern Seas by Guy Newell Boothby

The compass card consists of cut-out printed letters pasted upon a printed compass rose, and the fleur-de-lis at North is inked-in by hand.

From Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers by Silvio A. Bedini

The compass card, probably the most interesting of any found in the wooden instruments, is hand-colored in black, blue, red, and gold.

From Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers by Silvio A. Bedini