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The magnetic compass was first invented as a device for divination as early as the Chinese Han dynasty and Tang dynasty (since about 206 BC). [1] [3] [34] The compass was used in Song dynasty China by the military for navigational orienteering by 1040–44, [22] [35] [36] and was used for maritime navigation by 1111 to 1117. [37]
He is referenced in a number of Chinese idioms. The Chinese equivalent of "teaching one's grandmother to suck eggs" is to "brandish one's axe at Lu Ban's door" [14] (班门弄斧 [15]). His cultural companion is the stone worker Wang Er, who lived around the same time. [14] The Lu Ban Ruler (魯班尺) is used in feng shui practices. [16]
The Chinese polymath Shen Kuo (1031–1095) of the Song dynasty (960–1279) was the first to accurately describe both magnetic declination (in discerning true north) and the magnetic needle compass in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088, and the Song dynasty writer Zhu Yu (fl. 12th century) was the first to mention use of the compass specifically ...
The Chinese Diamond Sutra, the oldest known printed book in world history (868), using woodblock printing. Shen Kuo wrote that during the Qingli reign period (1041–1048), under Emperor Renzong of Song (1022–1063), an obscure commoner and artisan known as Bi Sheng (990–1051) invented ceramic movable type printing .
The Compass branch is a collection of more recent feng shui techniques based on the Eight Directions, each of which is said to have unique qi. It uses the Luopan, a disc marked with formulas in concentric rings around a magnetic compass. [49] The Compass Branch includes techniques such as Flying Star and Eight Mansions. [citation needed]
A reconstruction of an early Chinese compass. A spoon made of lodestone, its handle pointing south, was mounted on a brass plate with astrological symbols. [1]The history of geomagnetism is concerned with the history of the study of Earth's magnetic field.
The Chinese invention of woodblock printing, at some point before the first dated book in 868 (the Diamond Sutra), produced the world's first print culture. According to A. Hyatt Mayor, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "it was the Chinese who really invented the means of communication that was to dominate until our age."
The polymath Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095 CE) was not only the first in history to describe the magnetic-needle compass, but also made a more accurate measurement of the distance between the pole star and true north that could be used for navigation.