Historical qibla instruments were precision brass devices built by professional instrument makers, combining a compass with tables or dials calculating the direction and sometimes the distance to Mecca from a given city, a genuine feat of applied geography built for astronomers and surveyors rather than the average traveler.
Who built them, and for whom
Ottoman and Safavid workshops produced some of the most elaborate surviving examples, engraved brass instruments that doubled as sundials, made for mosques, scholars and wealthy patrons rather than mass owned by ordinary worshippers, who more often relied on a mosque's architecture, already oriented correctly, or local knowledge passed down informally. A working mosque's mihrab is calculated once by its builders rather than requiring a compass check for every prayer.
The modern, disposable version
Today the same function is served overwhelmingly by phone applications and cheap plastic compasses sold in Muslim majority countries and at hajj supply shops, objects with no craftsmanship investment and no restriction on use or ownership. A historical brass qibla instrument, by contrast, has become a museum and collector's object, its accuracy sometimes still tested by modern scholars against the cities it was built to serve, while a broken modern compass is simply replaced without ceremony.