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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
Compass. History of invention and production
Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us The compass, like paper, was invented by the Chinese in ancient times. In the III century BC. The Chinese philosopher Hen Fei-tzu described the device of the modern compass as follows: it looked like a pouring spoon made of magnetite with a thin handle and a spherical, carefully polished convex part. With this convex part, the spoon was mounted on an equally carefully polished copper or wooden plate, so that the handle did not touch the plate, but hung freely above it, and at the same time the spoon could easily rotate around the axis of its convex base. The designations of the countries of the world in the form of cyclic zodiac signs were applied on the plate. By pushing the handle of the spoon, it was set in rotational motion. Having calmed down, the compass pointed with a handle (which played the role of a magnetic needle) exactly to the south. This was the most ancient device for determining the cardinal points. In the XNUMXth century, a floating compass needle made of an artificial magnet appeared for the first time in China. Usually it was made in the shape of a fish. This fish was lowered into a vessel with water. Here she swam freely, pointing her head in the direction where the south was. Several varieties of the compass were invented in the same XNUMXth century by the Chinese scientist Shen Gua, who worked hard on the study of the properties of the magnetic needle. He suggested, for example, to magnetize an ordinary sewing needle on a natural magnet, then attach it with wax in the center of the body to a freely hanging silk thread. This compass indicated the direction more accurately than a floating compass, since it experienced much less resistance when it turned.
Another design of the compass, proposed by Shen Gua, was even closer to the modern one: here a magnetized needle was mounted on a hairpin. During his experiments, Shen Gua found that the compass needle does not point exactly to the south, but with some deviation, and correctly explained the reason for this phenomenon by the fact that the magnetic and geographical meridians do not coincide with each other, but form an angle. Scientists who lived after Shen Gua already knew how to calculate this angle (called the magnetic declination) for various regions of China.
In the XI century, many Chinese ships were equipped with floating compasses. They were installed usually on the nose and at the stern of ships, so that the captains could keep the correct course in any weather, in accordance with their instructions. In this form, the Arabs borrowed the Chinese compass in the XNUMXth century. At the beginning of the XIII century, the "floating needle" became known to Europeans. Italian sailors were the first to adopt it from the Arabs. From them, the compass passed to the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the French, and later to the Germans and the British. At first, the compass consisted of a magnetized needle and a piece of wood (cork) floating in a vessel of water. Soon they guessed to cover this vessel with glass in order to protect the float from the action of the wind. In the middle of the 16th century, they came up with the idea of placing a magnetic needle on a point in the middle of a paper circle (cartridge). Then the Italian Flavio Gioia improved the compass by providing it with a card divided into XNUMX parts (rhumbs), four for each part of the world. This simple device was a big step in improving the compass.
Later the circle was divided into 32 equal sectors. In the XNUMXth century, to reduce the impact of pitching, the arrow began to be mounted on a gimbals, and a century later, the compass was equipped with a rotating ruler with sights at the ends, which made it possible to more accurately count directions. The compass made the same revolution in navigation as gunpowder - in military affairs, and the reworking process - in metallurgy. It was the first navigational instrument that made it possible to plot a course on the high seas. Armed with a compass, Spanish and Portuguese sailors at the end of the XNUMXth century ventured on distant voyages. They left the seashores (to which navigation had been tied for several millennia) and set sail across the ocean. Author: Ryzhov K.V.
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