Solid Brass Captain's Push Button Compass 3"

First developed in China, possibly as early as 2634 BC, the nautical compass has become one of the most important tools in history. Discovering that a needle magnetized by a piece of lodestone would always point North or South the basic idea of the nautical compass emerged, and by 1044 the Song Dynasty had a written account of the device. Within the next hundred years the Chinese began using compasses to navigate at sea, and by 1300 the nautical compass had reached Europe where it would come to truly change the world. Magnetic hand compasses have changed very little from the initial Chinese devices because of the fundamental principle that makes them work. Initially the Chinese simply attached a needle to a silk thread, or floated it on a piece of cork in a bowl of water. The silk and cork provided almost frictionless pivot points, and the needle would be magnetized by being rubbed across a piece of hematite, or lodestone, which is a naturally occurring magnetized mineral. As the Earth’s magnetic field exerts torque on all other magnetic fields, the newly magnetized needle would point to one of the poles, and the hand compass now operated. This occurs because the hematite causes all electrons, spinning around each of the atoms that make up the needle, to rotate in the same direction, creating a flow from positive to negative resulting in an overall magnetic charge.