A magnetic car preceded the Emperors of China in ceremonies of state during the fourth century of our era.  It contained a genius in a feather dress who pointed to the south, and was doubtless moved by a magnet floating in water or turning on a pivot.  This rude appliance was afterwards refined into the needle compass for guiding mariners on the sea, and assisting the professors of feng-shui or geomancy in their magic rites.

Magnetite was also found at Heraclea in Lydia, and at Magnesium on the Meander or Magnesium at Sipylos, all in Asia Minor.  It was called the “Heraclean Stone” by the people, but came at length to bear the name of “Magnet” after the city of Magnesia or the mythical shepherd Magnes, who was said to have discovered it by the attraction of his iron crook.

The ancients knew that it had the power of communicating its attractive property to iron, for we read in Plato’s “Ion” that a number of iron rings can be supported in a chain by the Heraclean Stone.  Lucretius also describes an experiment in which iron filings are made to rise up and “rave” in a brass basin by a magnet held underneath.  We are told by other writers that images of the gods and goddesses were suspended in the air by lodestone in the ceilings of the temples of Diana of Ephesus, of Serapis at Alexandria, and others.  It is surprising, however, that neither the Greeks nor Romans, with all their philosophy, would seem to have discovered its directive property.

During the dark ages pieces of Lodestone mounted as magnets were employed in the “black arts.”  A small natural magnet of this kind is shown in figure 25, where L is the stone shod with two iron “pole-pieces,” which are joined by a “keeper” A or separable bridge of iron carrying a hook for supporting weights.

Apparently it was not until the twelfth century that the compass found its way into Europe from the East.  In the Landnammabok of Ari Frode, the Norse historian, we read that Flocke Vildergersen, a renowned viking, sailed from Norway to discover Iceland in the year 868, and took with him two ravens as guides, for in those days the “seamen had no lodestone (that is, no lidar stein, or leading stone) in the northern countries.”  The Bible, a poem of Guiot de Provins, minstrel at the court of Barbarossa, which was written in or about the year 890, contains the first mention of the magnet in the West.  Guiot relates how mariners have an “art which cannot deceive” of finding the position of the polestar, that does not move.  After touching a needle with the magnet, “an ugly brown stone which draws iron to itself,” he says they put the needle on a straw and float it on water so that its point turns to the hidden star, and enables them to keep their course.  Arab traders had probably borrowed the floating needle from the Chinese, for Bailak Kibdjaki, author of the Merchant’s Treasure, written in the thirteenth century, speaks of its use in the Syrian sea.  The first Crusaders were probably instrumental in bringing it to France, at all events Jacobus de Vitry (1204-15) and Vincent de Beauvais (1250) mention its use, De Beauvais calling the poles of the needle by the Arab words aphron and zohran.