Where Did the Compass Come From?

Compasses are such a part of our lives now, it may be hard to remember that there was a time when using a compass was impossible, because they had not been invented. Whereas now we go hiking with GPS, and consider a compass a “quaint,” old-fashioned but sometimes useful invention, for many years compasses were one of the wonders of the world.

With their having invented pasta and fireworks, it is hardly surprising that the Chinese would have invented the compass, but this fact is not well-known except among people who study Chinese history, or the history of inventions.

While there was a time before the compass, that time was actually very long ago. The compass is believed to have been invented during the Qin dynasty, which existed between 221 and 206 B.C. No one knows the name of the inventor of the compass, but it appears to have originated with Chinese fortune tellers. These men used lodestones to construct fortune telling boards. Lodestone, also known as magnetite, is a mineral, made largely of iron oxide, that aligns itself in a north-south direction.

Whether lodestones were successful at telling fortunes is not known, but they did prove very helpful in pointing out directions. This led to the invention of the first compass. Early compasses were a square slab with markings for each direction (N, W, E, S) and the constellations in the ancient Chinese sky. The needle was a spoon-shaped lodestone, with the handle always pointing south.

These magnets were used for some time. A more “modern” compass, to our minds, appeared in the 8^th century A.D., and also originated in China. This device used a magnetized needle, instead of a lodestone.

At some point between 850 and 1500, these magnetized-needle compasses seem to have found their way onto ships and become navigational aids. The first person known to have used the compass as a ship's navigational aid, according to written records, was Zheng He, a ship's captain from the Yunnan province, who made seven ship's voyages between 1405 and 1433.

Compasses such as boy scouts and hikers use now, with plastic enclosures, were obviously many centuries in development beyond Zheng He, but the basic function of a compass has not changed in nearly 3,000 years. Compasses are used to determine which way is north, and knowing that, to determine where one should go.

The most important function of a compass has always been, and continues to be, locating true north, and when lost in the woods with a faulty GPS or no GPS at all, any smart hiker is happy for the presence of an old metal compass, no matter how banged up or ugly, because a compass can mean the difference between walking out of the woods alive and getting hopelessly lost and dying of exposure. As for sailors, they are all no doubt happy to have the apparatus that helped Zheng He make his seven successful voyages.

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