1 Comments Posted by xbob

wrote:
This is just a guess, but it could be that the feet dial actually does hit the center of the fathom dial every revolution. Since there are 6 feet in a fathom, every time the foot dial contacts the base of the fathom dial it could hit a gear thats just under the center of the dial. If the gear had ten teeth and the contact was just right, each passing of the foot dial would move the fathom dial one tenth. Kind of like a mechanical car odometer when you roll a zero digit it rolls the dial next to it one tenth. This would also explain the clockwise/counterclockwise rotation noted above.