A dictionary, practical, theoretical and historical of commerce and commercial navigation . d regrets that contem-porary historians furnish no details as to the lifeof a man to whose genius society is so deeplyindebted. (History of America, vol. i. p. 47, ) But though Gioia may have made improve-ments on the compass, it has been shown that hehas no claim to be considered as its have been produced from writers whoflourished more than a century before Gioia, inwhich the polarity of the needle when touched bythe magnet is distinctly pointed out. Not only,however, had th
A dictionary, practical, theoretical and historical of commerce and commercial navigation . d regrets that contem-porary historians furnish no details as to the lifeof a man to whose genius society is so deeplyindebted. (History of America, vol. i. p. 47, ) But though Gioia may have made improve-ments on the compass, it has been shown that hehas no claim to be considered as its have been produced from writers whoflourished more than a century before Gioia, inwhich the polarity of the needle when touched bythe magnet is distinctly pointed out. Not only,however, had this singular property been dis-covered, but also its application to the purposes ofnavigation, long previously to the fourteenthcentury. Old French writers have been quoted(Macphersons Annals of Commerce, anno 1200;Reess Cyclopaedia) that seem fully to establishthis fact. But whatever doubts may exist withrespect to them cannot affect the passages whichthe learned Spanish antiquary, Don Antonio deCapmany (Questiones Criticas, p. 73—132), has THE PORT of CONSTANTINOPLE One Naratxc Mil e. COMPASS given from a work of the famous Raymond Lully(De Contemplatione) published in 1272. In oneplace Lully says, as the needle when touched bythe magnet naturally turns to the north (sicut acusper naturam vertitur ad septentrionem dum sittacta a magnete). This is conclusive as to the au-thors acquaintance with the polarity of the needle;and the following passage from the same work—* as the nautical needle directs mariners in theirnavigation (sicufc acus nautica dirigit marinariosin sua navigation©, &c.) is no less conclusive as toits being used by sailors in regulating their are no means of ascertaining the mode inwhich the needle Raymond Lully had in view wasmade use of. It has been sufficiently established(see the authorities already referred to, andAzuni, Dissertation sur VOrigine de la Boussole)that it was usual to float the needle, by meansof a straw, on the surface of a
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