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.
Ere long the needle was mounted on a pivot and provided with a moving card showing the principal directions. The variation of the needle from the true north and south was certainly known in China during the twelfth, and in Europe during the thirteenth century. Columbus also found that the variation changed its value as he sailed towards America on his memorable voyage of 1492. Moreover, in 1576, Norman, a compass maker in London, showed that the north- seeking end of the needle dipped below the horizontal.
In these early days it was supposed that lodestone in the pole- star, that is to say, the "lodestar" of the poets or in mountains of the far north, attracted the trembling needle; but in the year 1600, Dr. Gilbert, the founder of electric science, demonstrated beyond a doubt that the whole earth was a great magnet. A magnet, as is well known, has, like an electric battery, always two poles or centres of attraction, which are situated near its extremities. Sometimes, indeed, when the magnet is imperfect, there are "consequent poles" of weaker force between them. One of the poles is called the "north," and the other the "south," because if the magnet were freely pivotted like a compass needle, the former would turn to the north and the latter to the south.
Either pole will attract iron, but soft or annealed iron does not retain the magnetism nearly so well as steel. Hence a boy's test for the steel of his knife is only efficacious when the blade itself becomes magnetic after being touched with the magnet. A piece of steel is readily magnetised by stroking it from end to end in one direction with the pole of a magnet, and in this way compass needles and powerful bar magnets can be made.
The poles attract iron at a distance by "induction," just as a charge of electricity, be it positive or negative, will attract a neutral pith ball; and Dr. Gilbert showed that a north pole always repels another north pole and attracts a south pole, while, on the other hand, a south pole always repels a south pole and attracts a north pole. This can be proved by suspending a magnetic needle like a pithball, and approaching another towards it, as illustrated in figure 26, where the north pole N attracts the south S. Obviously there are two opposite kinds of magnetic poles, as of electricity, which always appear together, and like magnetic poles repel, unlike magnetic poles attract each other.
It follows that the magnetic pole of the compass needle which turns to the north must be unlike the north and like the south magnetic pole of the earth. Instead of calling it the "north," it would be less confusing to call it the "north-seeking" pole of the needle.
Gilbert made a "terella," or miniature of the earth, as a magnet, and not only demonstrated how the compass needle sets along the lines joining the north and south magnetic poles, but explained the variation and the dip. He imagined that the magnetic poles coincided with the geographical poles, but, as a matter of fact, they do not, and, moreover, they are slowly moving round the geographical poles, hence the declination of the needle, that is to say its angle of divergence from the true meridian or north and south line, is gradually changing. The north magnetic pole of the earth was actually discovered by Sir John Ross north of British America, on the coast of Boothia (latitude 70 degrees 5' N, longitude 96 degrees 46' W), where, as foreseen, the needle entirely lost its directive property and stood upright, or, so to speak, on its head. The south magnetic pole lies in the Prince Albert range of Victona Land, and was almost reached by Sir James Clark Ross.
The magnetism of the earth is such as might be produced by a powerful magnet inside, but its origin is unknown, although there is reason to believe that masses of lodestone or magnetic iron exist in the crust. Coulomb found that not only iron, but all substances are more or less magnetic, and Faraday showed in 1845 that while some are attracted by a magnet others are repelled. The former he called paramagnetic and the latter diamagnetic bodies.
The following is a list of these.—