Eureka Reporter | 1906-07-13 | Page 4 | The First Compass

THE FIRST COMPASS was known to sailors before the twelfth century indispensable adjunct to navigation some asian people perhaps tl achl aase discovered many centuries ago that a kind of iron ore possessed a very peculiar quality we call this ore magnetic ore in more common lan guage lodestone and it Is very widely distributed especially in the older crystalline rocks it was found that 1 a bit of lodestone were placed in water upon a piece of cork or straw braid it would turn till the axis of the tone assumed a north and south alon A phenomenon of magnetism had been discovered by means of an that is peculiarly susceptible to ma influence it Is an open question whether the chinese utilized the directive power 01 the lodestone but it Is certain that the first rude compas was not ud on european vessels before the twelfth century ot our era by that time the true magnetic compass had been evolved through the discovery that it an iron or steel beede neede stroked on a lodestone it aou d receive the at and directive power ol 01 this ore with this wonderful appliance placed at the service bt navigation tha vessels that had hugged the coasts soon dared to venture even out of sight of land A new impetus was gradually given to cartography for now the true directions of the coast lines might be barted with some approach to acu ac u racy it was the hapy fortune of ital lan sailors to make the su singly ex cellena surveys of the directions and lengths of the black sea and mealter fanean coasts and along the atlantic to british water that have come down to us in the so called maps cyrus adams in harper s