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The history of the compass started more than 2000 years ago during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). The first compasses were made of lodestone, a naturally magnetized stone of iron, in Han dynasty China. [1] [2] It was called the "South Pointing Fish" and was used for land navigation by the mid-11th century during the Song dynasty (960 ...
The first mention of a compass in Europe was in 1190 AD by Alexander Neckam. He described it as a common navigational aid for sailors, so the compass must have been introduced to Europe some time earlier. Whether the knowledge came from China to Europe, or was invented separately, is not clear.
A modern military compass, with included sight device for aligning. A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with magnetic north.
The Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) was the first person known to write about the magnetic needle compass and by the 12th century Chinese were known to use the lodestone compass for navigation. In Europe, the first description of the compass and its use for navigation are of Alexander Neckam (1187), although the use of compasses was ...
Historically, the north and south poles of a magnet were first defined by the Earth's magnetic field, not vice versa, since one of the first uses for a magnet was as a compass needle. A magnet's North pole is defined as the pole that is attracted by the Earth's North Magnetic Pole, in the arctic region, when the magnet is suspended so it can ...
Pivoting compass needle in a 14th-century handcopy of Peter's Epistola de magnete (1269). Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt (Latin), Pierre Pelerin de Maricourt (French), or Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt [1] (fl. 1269), was a French mathematician, physicist, and writer who conducted experiments on magnetism and wrote the first extant treatise describing the properties of magnets.
European treatises on sundial design appeared c. 1500. [23] An Egyptian method of determining the time during the night, used from at least 600 BC, was a type of plumb-line called a merkhet. A north–south meridian was created using two merkhets aligned with Polaris, the north pole star. The time was determined by observing particular stars as ...
Silva Sweden AB created their first compass in 1928, and established their company in 1933. Below is a Chronological timeline of important dates in the history of Silva Sweden AB: [ 3 ] 1928 Gunnar Tillander invents the first orienteering (baseplate) compass.