Discoveries that changed the world | compass

ArabiaWeather - A compass is a navigational tool for determining the direction with respect to the poles of the Earth

And it was not replaced until recently by modern devices such as the Global Positioning System (GPS).

The invention of the compass

Arab Muslims were the first to invent the magnetic compass, and it is considered one of the great inventions in the history of Islamic and Arab civilization,

In the past, man used to depend in his exploratory voyages, on land or sea, on looking to the sky to see the four directions, during the day he watches the sun and the direction of the shade, and at night he watches the stars, but the weather conditions often let him down, especially in the seas where there are many clouds and clouds and there is no vision. It limits its activity and movement, and from here the invention of the magnetic needle was a new breakthrough in the march of his era.

The Arabs were not the first to know the magnetic property, as the Greeks and Chinese knew it before them, but the Arab Muslims were the first to take advantage of this feature in making the first compass by rubbing the needle on the magnet and then placing it on a vessel in which there is water so that it floats and the needle points towards the north.

In the year 1475 AD, the marine scientist Ibn Majid invented the first needle sitting on a tooth in order to move freely without the need for a bowl of water.

In the year 1300, in an Arabic research written by the Egyptian astronomer and muezzin Ibn Sim, the author described a dry compass that he used as a pointer to the direction of Mecca, and in the fourteenth century, the astronomer Ibn al-Shater (1304-1375) invented a compass that combines a universal sundial with a compass. Magnetism.

And he invented that compass for the purpose of determining the direction to Mecca, and the times of prayers in the Umayyad Mosque.

Arab navigators also invented a compass with 32 directions at this time.