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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.
While pivoting needles in glass boxes had already been described by the French scholar Peter Peregrinus in 1269, [76] and by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Simʿūn in 1300, [6] traditionally Flavio Gioja (fl. 1302), an Italian pilot from Amalfi, has been credited with perfecting the sailor's compass by suspending its needle over a compass card, thus ...
Robert Norman is noted for The Newe Attractive, a pamphlet published in 1581 [1] describing the lodestone and practical aspects of navigation.More importantly, it included Norman's measurement of magnetic dip, the incline at an angle from the horizon by a compass needle discovered by Georg Hartmann in 1544.
A beam compass and a regular compass Using a compass A compass with an extension accessory for larger circles A bow compass capable of drawing the smallest possible circles. A compass, also commonly known as a pair of compasses, is a technical drawing instrument that can be used for inscribing circles or arcs.
A circumferentor, or surveyor's compass, is an instrument used in surveying to measure horizontal angles. It was superseded by the theodolite in the early 19th century. [1] A circumferentor consists of a circular brass box containing a magnetic needle, which moves freely over a brass circle, or compass divided into 360 degrees.
The little needle has one end pointing south and the other pointing north. During the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), the compass was brought to the Arab world and Europe. People relied on interpreting the positions of the sun, moon, and pole stars to tell directions on open ocean or new area before the discovery of the compass.
32-point compass rose. The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography.A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each separated by 90 degrees, and secondarily divided by four ordinal (intercardinal) directions—northeast, southeast, southwest, and ...
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 ...