Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of a backwoods hike I took with a friend some years back. We each brought a compass, "for redundancy", but it wasn't until we were well underway that we noticed our respective compasses frequently disagreed. We often wished we had a third to break the tie!

View on HN

Sounds like the joke about a man with one watch always being sure about what time it is, but a man with two being continuously in doubt.

Just computate the average, then counter the documented drift vs a external source?

My grandfather was working with Stanisław Skarżyński, who was preparing for his first crossing of the Atlantic in a lightweight airplane (RWD-5bis, 450kg empty weight) in 1933.

They initially mounted two compasses in the cockpit, but Skarżyński taped one of them over so that it wasn't visible, saying wisely that if one fails, he will have no idea which one is correct.

That's a cool story! Would have loved to have heard more about that :)

> if one fails, he will have no idea which one is correct

Depends how it fails! For example, say, when you change direction one turns and the other doesn't.

Couldn't he bring his own 3rd? Compasses aren't heavy?

…or a 4th and a 5th, and have voting rounds — an idea explored by Stanisław Lem in "Golem XIV", where a parliament of machines voted :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com