Update
The Oxford Biblical Studies Online and Oxford Islamic Studies Online have retired. Content you previously purchased on Oxford Biblical Studies Online or Oxford Islamic Studies Online has now moved to Oxford Reference, Oxford Handbooks Online, Oxford Scholarship Online, or What Everyone Needs to Know®. For information on how to continue to view articles visit the subscriber services page.
Dismiss
Signed in as:

More on this Topic

Related Content

In this work

Related Overviews

Lord Kelvin (1824—1907) mathematician and physicist

lodestone

deviation

View all related overviews »

 
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: null; date: 07 June 2023

magnetic compass

Source:
The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military
Author(s):

Oxford Dictionaries

magnetic compass 

an instrument containing a freely suspended magnetic element that displays the direction of the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field at the point of observation.