spirit compass



A compass, magnetic compass or mariner's compass is a navigational instrument for determining direction relative to the earth's magnetic poles. It consists of a magnetized pointer (usually marked on the North end) free to align itself with Earth's magnetic field. The face of the compass generally highlights the cardinal points of north, south, east and west. The compass greatly improved maritime trade by making travel safer and more efficient. A compass can be used to calculate heading, used with a sextant to calculate latitude, and with a marine chronometer to calculate longitude. It thus provides a much improved navigational capability, that has only been recently supplanted by modern devices such as the gyrocompass and the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Fundamentally, the classic compass is any magnetically sensitive device able to indicate the direction of the magnetic north of a planet's magnetosphere. Often compasses are built as a stand alone sealed instrument with a magnetized bar or needle turning freely upon a pivot, or moving in a fluid, thus able to point in a northerly and southerly direction. An early form of the compass (a magnetized needle floating in water) was invented in ancient China sometime before 1044. The dry compass was invented in medieval Europe around 1300. This was supplanted in the early 20th century by the liquid-filled magnetic compass.

Other, more accurate, devices have been invented for determining north that do not depend on the Earth's magnetic field for operation (known in such cases as true north, as opposed to magnetic north). A gyrocompass or astrocompass can be used to find true north, while being unaffected by stray magnetic fields, nearby electrical power circuits or nearby large masses of ferrous metals. A recent development is the electronic compass, which detects the magnetic directions without requiring moving parts. This device frequently appears as an optional subsystem built into GPS receivers.

History of the compass

Navigation prior to the compass

Prior to the introduction of the compass, position and direction at sea was primarily determined by the sighting of landmarks, supplemented with the observation of the position of celestial bodies. Ancient mariners usually kept within easy sight of land. The invention of the compass enabled the determination of heading when the sky was overcast or foggy. And, when the sun or other known celestial bodies could be observed, it enabled the calculation of latitude. This enabled mariners to navigate safely away from land, contributing to the Age of Discovery.

Olmec artifact

Based on his find of an Olmec hematite artifact in Mesoamerica, radiocarbon dated to 1400-1000 BC, the American astronomer John Carlson has suggested that "the Olmec may have discovered and used the geomagnetic lodestone compass earlier than 1000 BC". If true, this "predates the Chinese discovery of the geomagnetic lodestone compass by more than a millennium". Carlson speculates that the Olmecs may have used similar artifacts as a directional device for astrological or geomantic purposes.

The artifact itself is part of a lodestone that had been polished into a bar with a groove at one end (that Carlson suggests may have been used for sighting). The artifact now consistently points 35.5 degrees west of north, but may have pointed north-south when whole. It has been suggested that the artifact was in fact used as some constituent piece of a decorative ornament. No other similar hematite artifacts have yet been found.


Due to disagreement as to when the compass was invented, it may be appropriate to list some noteworthy Chinese literary references offered as possible evidence for its antiquity, in chronological order:

  • The earliest Chinese literature reference to magnetism lies in a 4th century BC book called Book of the Devil Valley Master (鬼谷子): "The lodestone makes iron come or it attracts it.
  • The first mention of the attraction of a needle by a magnet is to be found in a Chinese work composed between 20 and 100 AD (Lun Heng ch. 47): "A lodestone attracts a needle." "This passage of Louen-heng is the first Chinese text concerning the attraction of a needle by a magnet". In 1948, the scholar Wang Chen-Tuo constructed a "compass" in the form of south-indicating spoon on the basis of this text. However, it should be noted that "there is no explicit mention of a magnet in the Louen-heng" and that "beforehand it needs to assume some hypotheses to arrive at such a conclusion."
  • The earliest reference to a specific magnetic direction finder device is recorded in a Song Dynasty book dated to 1040-44. Here we find a description of an iron "south-pointing fish" floating in a bowl of water, aligning itself to the south. The device is recommended as a means of orientation "in the obscurity of the night." The Wujing Zongyao (武经总要, "Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques") stated: "When troops encountered gloomy weather or dark nights, and the directions of space could not be distinguished...they made use of the [mechanical] south-pointing carriage, or the south-pointing fish." This was achieved by heating of metal (especially if steel), known today as thermo-remanence, and would have been capable of producing a weak state of magnetization. While the Chinese achieved magnetic remanence and induction by this time, a similar discovery was not made in Europe until about 1600, when William Gilbert published his De Magnete.
  • The first incontestable reference to a magnetized needle in Chinese literature appears as early as 1088. The Dream Pool Essays, written by the Song Dynasty polymath scientist Shen Kuo, contained a detailed description of how geomancers magnetized a needle by rubbing its tip with lodestone, and hung the magnetic needle with one single strain of silk with a bit of wax attached to the center of the needle. Shen Kuo pointed out that a needle prepared this way sometimes pointed south, sometimes north.
  • The earliest recorded actual use of a magnetized needle for navigational purposes then is to be found in Zhu Yu's book Pingzhou Table Talks (萍洲可談; Pingzhou Ketan) of 1119 (written from 1111 to 1117): The navigator knows the geography, he watches the stars at night, watches the sun at day; when it is dark and cloudy, he watches the compass.

Thus, the use of a magnetic compass as a direction finder occurred sometime before 1044, but evidence for the use of the compass as a navigational device did not appear until 1119.

The typical Chinese navigational compass was in the form of a magnetic needle floating in a bowl of water. According to Needham, the Chinese in the Song Dynasty and continuing Yuan Dynasty did make use of a dry compass, although this type never became as widely used in China as the wet compass. Evidence of this is found in the Shilin guangji ("Guide Through the Forest of Affairs"), first published in 1325 by Chen Yuanjing, although its compilation had taken place between 1100 and 1250. The dry compass in China was a dry suspension compass, a wooden frame crafted in the shape of a turtle hung upside down by a board, with the lodestone sealed in by wax, and if rotated, the needle at the tail would always point in the northern cardinal direction. Although the European compass-card in box frame and dry pivot needle was adopted in China after its use was taken by Japanese pirates in the 16th century (who had in turn learned of it from Europeans), the Chinese design of the suspended dry compass persisted in use well into the 18th century.

However, according to Kreutz there is only a single Chinese reference to a dry-mounted needle (built into a pivoted wooden tortoise) which is dated to between 1150 and 1250, but there is no indication that Chinese mariners ever used anything but the floating needle in a bowl until the 16th-century European contacts. Additionally, it must be pointed out that, unlike Needham, other experts on the history of the compass make no mention of an indigenous dry compass in China and reserve the term for the European form which became later worldwide standard.

The first recorded use of a 48 position mariner's compass on sea navigation was noted in a book titled “The Customs of Cambodia” by Yuan dynasty diplomat Zhou Daguan, he described his 1296 voyage from Wenzhou to Angkor Thom in detail; when his ship set sailed from Wenzhou, the mariner took a needle direction of “ding wei” position, which is equivalent to 22.5 degree SW. After they arrived at Baria, the mariner took "Kun Shen needle" , or 52.5 degree SW. Zheng He's Navigation Map, also known as "The Mao Kun Map", contains a large amount of detail "needle records" of Zheng He's travel.


Question of diffusion

There is much debate on what happened to the compass after its first appearance with the Chinese. Different theories include:

  • Travel of the compass from China to the Middle East via the Silk Road, and then to Europe.
  • Direct transfer of the compass from China to Europe, and then later from China or Europe to the Middle East.
  • Independent creation of the compass in Europe, and thereafter its transfer from China or Europe to the Middle East.

The latter two are supported by evidence of the earlier mentioning of the compass in European works rather than Arabic. The first European mention of a magnetized needle and its use among sailors occurs in Alexander Neckam's De naturis rerum (On the Natures of Things), probably written in Paris in 1190. Other evidence for this includes the Arabic word for "Compass" (al-konbas), possibly being a derivation of the old Italian word for compass.

In the Arab world, the earliest reference comes in The Book of the Merchants' Treasure, written by one Baylak al-Kibjaki in Cairo about 1282. Since the author describes having witnessed the use of a compass on a ship trip some forty years earlier, some scholars are inclined to antedate its first appearance accordingly. There is also a slightly earlier non-Mediterranean Muslim reference to an iron fish-like compass in a Persian talebook from 1232.

Question of independent European invention

There have been various arguments put forward concerning whether or not the European compass was an independent invention.

Arguments for independent invention:

  • The navigational needle in Europe points invariably north, whereas always south in China.
  • The European compass rose is divided into sixteen basic divisions, not twenty-four as in China.
  • The apparent failure of the Arabs to function as possible intermediaries between East and West due to the earlier recorded appearance of the compass in Europe (1190) than in the Muslim world (1232, 1242, and 1282).

Arguments against independent invention:

  • The temporal proximity of the Chinese navigational compass (1117) to its first appearance in Europe (1190).
  • The common shape of the early compass as a magnetized needle floating in a bowl of water.
  • The lack of evidence of prior knowledge in Europe of magnetism or how to induce it in an iron rod.

Medieval Europe

In the Mediterranean, the introduction of the compass, at first only known as a magnetized pointer floating in a bowl of water, went hand in hand with improvements in dead reckoning methods, and the development of Portolan charts, leading to more navigation during winter months in the second half of the 13th century. While the practice from ancient times had been to curtail sea travel between October and April, due in part to the lack of dependable clear skies during the Mediterranean winter, the prolongation of the sailing season resulted in a gradual, but sustained increase in shipping movement: By around 1290 the sailing season could start in late January or February, and end in December. The additional few months were of considerable economic importance. For instance, it enabled Venetian convoys to make two round trips a year to the Levant, instead of one.

At the same time, traffic between the Mediterranean and northern Europe also increased, with first evidence of direct commercial voyages from the Mediterranean into the English Channel coming in the closing decades of the 13th century, and one factor may be that the compass made traversal of the Bay of Biscay safer and easier. Although critics like Kreutz feels that it was later in 1410 that anyone really started steering by compass.

Islamic world

The earliest reference to an iron fish-like compass in the Islamic world occurs in a Persian talebook from 1232. The earliest Arabic reference to a compass - in the form of magnetic needle in a bowl of water - comes from the Yemeni sultan and astronomer Al-Ashraf in 1282. He also appears to be the first to make use of the compass for astronomical purposes. Since the author describes having witnessed the use of a compass on a ship trip some forty years earlier, some scholars are inclined to antedate its first appearance in the Arab world accordingly.

In 1300, another Arabic treatise written by the Egyptian astronomer and muezzin Ibn Simʿūn describes a dry compass for use as a "Qibla indicator" to find the direction to Mecca. Like Peregrinus' compass, however, Ibn Simʿūn's compass did not feature a compass card. In the 14th century, the Syrian astronomer and timekeeper Ibn al-Shatir (1304-1375) invented the compass dial, a timekeeping device incorporating both a universal sundial and a magnetic compass. He invented it for the purpose of finding the direction to Mecca and the times of Salah prayers at the Umayyad Mosque. Arab navigators also introduced the 32-point compass rose during this time.

Dry compass


While pivoting needles in glass boxes had already been described by the French scholar Peter Peregrinus in 1269, and by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Simʿūn in 1300, there is an inclination to honour tradition and credit Flavio Gioja (fl. 1302), an Italian marine pilot from Amalfi, with perfecting the sailor's compass by suspending its needle over a compass card, giving thus the compass its familiar appearance. Such a compass with the needle attached to a rotating card is also described in a commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy from 1380, while an earlier source refers to a portable compass in a box (1318), supporting the notion that the dry compass was known in Europe by then.


The use of a compass as a direction finder underground was pioneered by the Tuscan mining town Massa where floating magnetic needles were employed for determining tunneling and defining the claims of the various mining companies as early as the 13th century. In the second half of the 15th century, the compass belonged to the standard equipment of Tyrolian miners, and shortly afterwards a first detailed treatise dealing with the underground use of compasses was published by the German miner Rülein von Calw (1463-1525).

Bearing compass

A bearing compass is a magnetic compass mounted in such a way that it allows the taking of bearings of objects by aligning them with the lubber line of the bearing compass. A surveyor's compass is a specialized compasses made to accurately measure heading of landmarks and measure horizontal angles to help with map making. These were already in common use by the early 18th century and are described in the 1728 Cyclopaedia. Later, a prism and lens was mounted on top of a compass in such a way that enabled the user to accurately sight the heading of geographical landmarks, thus creating the prismatic compass. The Bezard compass was invented in 1906, and consists of a compass with a mirror mounted above it. This enabled the user to easily see the face of the compass while also walking and viewing the surrounding landscape.

Liquid compass

The liquid compass was generally introduced into the British Royal Navy in 1908. An early version developed by the Navy captain Creak proved to be operational under heavy gunfire and seas, but lacked navigational precision compared with the design by Lord Kelvin:

Captain Creak's first step in the development of the liquid compass was to introduce a "card mounted on a float, with two thin and relatively short needles, fitted with their poles at the scientifically correct angular distances, and with the centre of gravity, centre of buoyancy, and the point of suspension in correct relation to each other...The compass thus designed rectified the defects of the Admiralty Standard Compass,...with the additional advantage of considerable steadiness under heavy gunfire and in a seaway... The one defect in the compass as developed by Creak up to 1892 was that "for manoeuvring purposes it was inferior to Lord Kelvin's compass, owing to comparative sluggishness on a large alteration of course through the drag on the card by the liquid in which it floated...

However, with ship and gun sizes continuously increasing, the advantages of the liquid compass over the Kelvin compass became more apparent, and the device was generally adopted after its manoeuvering capabilities had been improved.

Modern compasses

Modern compasses usually use a magnetized needle or dial inside a fluid-filled capsule (oil, kerosene, or alcohol is common). The fluid dampens the movement of the needle and causes the needle to stabilize quickly rather than oscillate back and forth around magnetic north. North on the needle or dial is usually marked with phosphorescent paint, to enable the compass to be read at night or in poor light.

Many modern hand held recreational and military compasses integrate a protractor with the compass, using a separate magnetized needle. In this design the rotating capsule containing the magnetized needle is fitted with orienting lines and an outlined orienting arrow, then mounted in a transparent baseplate containing a direction-of-travel (DOT) indicator for use in taking bearings directly from a map. Other features found on some modern compasses are map and romer scales for measuring distances and plotting positions on maps, luminous markings on the face or bezels, various sighting mechanisms (mirror, prism, etc.) for taking bearings of distant objects with greater precision, "global" needles for use in differing hemispheres, adjustable declination for obtaining instant true bearings without resort to arithmetic, and devices such as inclinometers for measuring gradients.

The military forces of a few nations, notably the United States Army, continue to utilize older lensatic card compass designs with magnetized compass dials instead of needles. A lensatic card compass permits reading the bearing off of the compass card with only a slight downward glance from the sights (see photo), but requires a separate protractor for use with a map. The official U.S. military lensatic compass does not use fluid to dampen needle swing, but rather electromagnetic induction to dampen the needle. A "deep-well" design is used to allow the compass to be used globally with little or no effect in accuracy caused by a tilting compass dial. As induction forces provide less damping than fluid-filled designs, a needle lock is fitted to the compass to reduce wear, operated by the folding action of the rear sight/lens holder. The use of air-filled induction compasses has declined over the years, as they may become inoperative or inaccurate in freezing temperatures or humid environments.

Mariner's compasses can have two or more magnetic needles permanently attached to a compass card. These move freely on a pivot. A lubber line, which can be a marking on the compass bowl or a small fixed needle indicates the ship's heading on the compass card. Traditionally the card is divided into thirty-two points (known as rhumbs), although modern compasses are marked in degrees rather than cardinal points. The glass-covered box (or bowl) contains a suspended gimbal within a binnacle. This preserves the horizontal position.

Some military compasses, like the SandY-183, contains the radioactive material tritium (3H) and a combination of phosphors. The SandY-183 contained 120mCi (millicuries) of tritium. The purpose of the tritium and phosphors is to provide illumination for the compass. This illumination is a form of fluorescence, not requiring the compass to be "recharged" by sunlight or artificial light. The name SandY-183 is derived from the name of the company, Stocker and Yale (SandY).


A gyrocompass is similar to a gyroscope. It is a compass that finds true north by using an (electrically powered) fast-spinning wheel and friction forces in order to exploit the rotation of the Earth. Gyrocompasses are widely used on ships. They have two main advantages over magnetic compasses:

  • they are not affected by ferrous metal in a ship's hull. (No compass is affected by nonferrous metal, although a magnetic compass will be affected by non-ferrous wires with current through them.)


Solid state compasses

Small compasses found in clocks, phones, e.g., the Nokia, and other electronic gear are solid-state devices, usually built out of two or three magnetic field sensors that provide data for a microprocessor. Using trigonometry the correct heading relative to the compass is calculated.

Often, the device is a discrete component which outputs either a digital or analog signal proportional to its orientation. This signal is interpreted by a controller or microprocessor and used either internally, or sent to a display unit. An example implementation, including parts list and circuit schematics, shows one design of such electronics. The sensor uses highly calibrated internal electronics to measure the response of the device to the Earth's magnetic field.

Specialty compasses

A range of specialty compasses would include a Qibla compass, which is used by Muslims to show the direction to Mecca for prayers. Similarly, a Jerusalem compass is used by Jews to point the direction of Jerusalem for prayers.

Other specialty compasses include the optical or prismatic hand-bearing compass, often used by surveyors, cave explorers, or mariners. This compass uses an oil-filled capsule and magnetized compass dial with an integral optical or prismatic sight, often fitted with built-in photoluminescent or battery-powered illumination. Using the optical or prism sight, such compasses can be read with extreme accuracy when taking bearings to an object, often to fractions of a degree. Most of these compasses are designed for heavy-duty use, with solid metal housings, and many are fitted for tripod mounting for additional accuracy.

Construction of a compass

Magnetic needle


Needle-and-bowl device


Points of the compass


In the modern era, the 360-degree system took hold. This system is still in use today for civilian navigators. The degree dial spaces the compass markings with 360 equidistant points. Some nations have adopted the "grad" system instead, which spaces the dial into 400 grads or points.

Most military defense forces have adopted the "mil" system, in which the compass dial is spaced into 6400 units (some nations use 6000) or "mils" for additional precision when measuring angles, laying artillery, etc. The value to the military is that one mil subtends approximately one metre at a distance of one kilometer. Former Warsaw Pact countries (Soviet Union, GDR etc.) used a 60° graduation (i.e., the unit is 100 Russian angular mils), often counterclockwise (see picture of wrist compass). This is still in use in Russia.

Compass balancing

Because the Earth's magnetic field's inclination and intensity vary at different latitudes, compasses are often balanced during manufacture. Most manufacturers balance their compass needles for one of five zones, ranging from zone 1, covering most of the Northern Hemisphere, to zone 5 covering Australia and the southern oceans. This balancing prevents excessive dipping of one end of the needle which can cause the compass card to stick and give false readings.

Compass correction

Like any magnetic device, compasses are affected by nearby ferrous materials as well as by strong local electromagnetic forces. Compasses used for wilderness land navigation should never be used in close proximity to ferrous metal objects or electromagnetic fields (batteries, car bonnets (automobile hoods), engines, steel pitons, wristwatches, etc).



A similar process is used to calibrate the compass in light general aviation aircraft, with the compass deviation card often mounted permanently just above or below the magnetic compass on the instrument panel. Fluxgate compasses can be calibrated automatically, and can also be programmed with the correct local compass variation so as to indicate the true heading.

Using a compass

The simplest way of using a compass is to know that the arrow always points in the same direction, magnetic North, which is roughly similar to true north. Except in areas of extreme magnetic declination variance (20 degrees or more), this is enough to protect from walking in a substantially different or even opposite direction than expected over short distances, provided the terrain is fairly flat and visibility is not impaired. In fact, by carefully recording distances (time or paces) and magnetic bearings traveled, one can plot a course and return to one's starting point using the compass alone.



See also





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