Virginia Beach, VA – Moshe Ashin is an Orthodox Jew who said that he got inspiration to develop what he calls the Jerusalem Compass.
"I started thinking to myself, wouldn't it be wonderful if the compass could point in a direction that had more meaning to all of us? A direction that was more important. So here we are, the holiest city in the world, the center of the universe and all roads lead to Jerusalem, let the compass point here," Ashin said.
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The Jerusalem Compass, unlike a typical compass that points north, is designed to point to Jerusalem.
"I developed a patented recalibration system and this keeps the needle of the compass constantly pointing in the direction of Jerusalem from anywhere in the world. Just open the cover and it's pointing there," Ashin said.
Actually, this compass is not at all similiar to the Moslem one’s. The Moslem ones which have been around for around 100 years are just normal North pointing compasses, and you need to rotate the entire compasses, until a “painted symbol” is pointing to Mecca.
This one has the novelty that the “moving needle” is pointing in another direction “other than North,”, and it can be programmed, (non electric) to point to Jerusalem from anywhere in the world. This means East of West of Jerusalem it will work, as well as North, and South. I have one..
Anonymous 4:55 said…
Does anyone know where to get it?
Can’t be found any more. Apparently, the truck driver tried delivering the compasses tried to find the store using one of the Magic Compasses and he got lost.
Does anyone know where to get it?
I remember these from at least 20 years ago. A moslem had made these to point to Mecca, and to give the times for their 5 daily prayers from anywhere in the world. They did not sell as well as he hoped, because 97% of the world’s moslems live within hearing distance of a mosque, and can hear the sound when it’s time to pray.
Some Jewish guy bought them up real cheap and reprogrammed them to point to Jerusalem and to give the times for Zman Krias Shema, Chatzos, Shkia etc. They actually had Hbrew stickers right over the Arabic writing on them.
There is no chochma to this. There is just a dummy pointer (that you can see) attached to the magnetic pointer (which is hidden) that always points east. It works if you happen to be located west of Jerusalem. But if you are located south of Jerusalem it will still point East, not to Jerusalem. The “patented reclibration system” is just that it allows you to manually switch the dummy pointer so that, for example, always points west. So if you are located west of Jerusalem you can set it to always point west. For anyone wishing to verify this, you can look up the filing at the US Patent & Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov). It is called the “magic compass” and it is patent # 7,134,213.
I used to have one of these. Why are they now in the news?
Sounds like a great invention. However, I found (through Google Patents Search) that a similar device was invented by a muslim that points to Mecca. See
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5546310&id=wN0bAAAAEBAJ&dq=Jerusalem+Compass