Discussion: 400 Degree Compass?

Just out of curiosity: Anyone familiar with compasses with bezels marked from 0 to 400, rather than the usual 0 to 360 degrees? Susie and I were leading a basic orienteering clinic yesterday, and one of the participants had such a compass. The compass was a Silva Type 7 NL, somewhat oldish looking. Other than the unusual bezel markings, the compass seemed to be a standard orienteering baseplate compass.

That is based on grads vs. degrees - which some of us may recall from our trig classes. A metric version of angle measurement. Would work just as well as any other compass except if bearings needed to be verbally communicated.

That is the common Swedish standard - it´s been a long time since we´ve ever needed to communicate bearings in numbers. This may have been common in beginner´s courses in the sixties, but has no use today.
And as mentioned above, of course it works just as well as any other compass (provided it´s made for the Northern Hemisphere - or whereever you´re supposed to use it).

Ahh...the grads/degrees distinction rings a bell now. It has been a few years since that last trig lesson.

and the NL means "north lat." so it should be fine for northern hemisphere.