"the alignment times decreased by an order of magnitude. ""
I remember it well - and the nagging fear that the drift on YOUR unit was one of the outliers on the curve............
Of course the old methods were'nt foolproof. I know of someone who set off to cut a 50 km path through a rain forest and dialed in the magnetic deviation on their survey gear on the "wrong" side". Only found out when they arrived, several weeks later, on a river 50+ kms away - several kms off plan...........