Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1871-10-12
THE MAGIC NEEDLE.
BY PROFESSOR sCHELE DE WE'RE.

AVtO NAADAHe
BY PROFESSOR sCnELE DE WE'RE.
! PL1SY. who, Of all ancient authors, en-
dures the hardest fate, be ng to-day praised
for his verscity and accuracy of statcmeL t,
and to. morrow denounced az an atrOcious
bIundefer, if not actually a deliberate liar,
tells US story of gentle shepherd Oh
Mount Ida, who was Suddenly seized by a
magic power while staining on rock,
from which no effort could free him again
1t was only when he abandoned his iron
shod crook, and his shoes, studded with
iron nails. that he could escape. Hls
name, Magnes wos subsequently given to
the stone that had held him captive. and
thus man became acquainted with mag
nets.
Whatever truth there may be in this
myth. it is certain that the arcients not
only knew the power possessed by the
dark, coarse, looking mineral which we
call magnetic iron, buE had also learnt d to
incre .se its capacity by an artificial arma.
ment. The old poets abound with graphic
descriptions of divine images held sus-
rended in the air. Now it was Venus
drawn heavenward by Al iron Mars; now
an Apollo, who rose visibly before admir-
ing crowds from dis pedestal, and hung
unsupported in mid-air. The story has
made it's way faithfully down through
every succeeding generation, and in every
country where art was sufficiently ad-
vanced to appreciate the problem. Thus,
an image in the tar-famed Serapium at Al
exandria, Egypt, was held by magnets sus-
pended above the altar; and for centuries
men believed undoubtingly that the coffin
of the Great Prophet was hanging be-
tween two magnets in its sombre sanctu-
ary at Mecca.
Nor were the ancients unacquainted
with the fact that magnets have invariably
two points which possess stronger pow.
er of attraction than the surface generally,
and that these srcalled poles are, more
over, capable of communicating this pow
er to other pieces Of iron, with which they
are brought in contact. Lucretius speaks
naively of mass Of filings in an iron
bowl, which was made to "boil up" when
a magnetic stone was placed beneath, and
of number of iron rings which the
priests caused to hang, barely touching
each other, and suspended one from the
other.
Magnets have third, and almost magic,
power. A tiny stesl needle, made mag
netic and placed upon piece of cork
swimming in basin of water, or suspend
ed upon a pivot on which It can turn with
perfect facility, will quiver for awhile, turn
to and fro, and finally point with unvary-
ing fidelity to point lying nearly north
King Solomon is said to have known this
strange tendency, and to have employed it
on board his fleet, which thus was enabled
to navigate the ocean; but this assertion
is unsupported, and far Fl tom plausible, as
the wise monarch employed Phoniciar
sailors, who WoulG soon have impaired the
secret to Greeks and Romans alike. But
those provoking men who seem to know
by intuition all that we have to learn by
painful study and frequent mistakes-the
Chine:e-~ere, beyond doubt, familiar
with the magic needle as they called it,
from the most ancient times Thousands
of years before the beginning of our era,
this strange nation-so wise in childhood,
80 ignorant in old age-had already erect.
ed, in the northern and less populous
provinces of their empire, lofty mile: posts,
one arm of which contained a magnetic
rod pointing southwark, while the other
arms were connected with it at the proper
angle. For, unlike Western nations, the
Chinese maintain that the magnetic needle
points to the south, which is, of course,
quite as correct as cur view that it points to
the north. On their journeys through the
boundless steppes Of Tartary, they were
guided by a sacred car, on which tall
human figure with its movable arm poirted
invariably southwark, and thus enabled
them safely to cross regions without land
mark. In the third century, at least, Chi
nese ships had regular compass On board,
and thus navigated the Indian Ocean in
safety.
In Europe, this power of the magnet
was perhaps known, but never appli. d, for
a thousand years An Icelandic writer,
Are Erode, makes the first mention Of it,
ne,r the year 100, stating that hundred
years before, famous pirate went in
search of Iceland under the guidance OF
since Gin those days sailors Of Northern
regions did not yet know the use of the
lead stone." For he called it the lead, or
leading stone, from which our loadstone is
derived. Even this historian, however,
knew only magnet suspended by thread,
and the compass itself was yet undiscov.
cred. At first, the magic needle was used
with amusing clumsiness, as we learn
from manuscript, dated 1903, in the
Royal Library ia Paris. An ugly, black
stone, called naarsnsere, we are told, which
sailors valued highly, was taken out when
nights were dark, and q needle rubbed
with it lightly; the latter was then Gun.
ningly placed upon straw, and set afloat
in BASIN, when the point would indicate
the north.
Another popularity of the magic nee
die was the Cause of much anxiety and
peril to the discoverer Of our continent
When the great navigator had ventured
about two hundred leagues into the At)an-
tic Ocean, on thv 14th OF September, 1892,
he noticed for the first time that the needle,
at evening dusk, no longer pointed due
north, but deviated several degrees in a
nOrthwesternly direction, and the next
morning the deviation had increased.
Full of anxiety and wonder, he watch
the farther west he sailed, the more the
needle appeared to deviate. At first, he kept
his discovery to himself, fearful lest he
should alarm his crew, and defeat his pur.
pose; but soon the men at the helm no.
tlced the change, and were filed with
grievous apprehensions. They fancied
they had penetrated into q new world,
ruled by other laws than those to which
they had been accustomed. If the msgic
needle lost its power, what was to become
OF them on the bOundless oceane Never,
perhaps, was Columbus greater than when,
sternly suppressing his own fears, he told
them that the magic net die pointed, not
toward the north pole on earth, but toward
an invisible part of the heavens, which
changed its place together with all the
heavenly bodies. They believed the man
whose vast kno owltdge and marvellous en-
ergy they had learned to appreciate; their
minds were cal'ued, the voyage continued,
and New Word discovt red. Hence
forth the magic needle achieved triumph
after triumph. With such aid, Diaz, Cabral,
and CANA, could cross vast oceans, and
Magellan and Sebastian Cabot sail around
the whole earth-thus ending forever the
objections made by superstition and big
otry, and teaching man the true form and
nature of the globe which he inhabits.
| While, heretofore, the majority of We ,sels,
in the Mediterranean even, had been
wrecked, or, at least, had reached their de-
sired haven only with small part of their
cargo, now, insurance companies were
formed in all the large seaport towns, and
the premium, even for India voyages, be-
came soon SO small as to make insurance
the rule
There remained, however, the difficulty
of ascertaining the precise spot on which
ship might be at sea; and England, cs-
pecially, with her immense navy, was
deeply interested in solving the problem.
The needle only showed the direction, but
not the starting point; and, although
ltcgiomontanus had taught how to find
the latitude by the aid of the polar star
-Cyn0sura, whence our word cynosure-