[103] Trans. Soc. Arts, 1825, 43, 38.
[104] Phil. Mag., 1873, 46, 140; 1874, 48, 321.
[105] Phil. Trans., 1885, 176, 523; Magnetic Induction, 1900.
[106] Proc. Roy. Soc., 1890, 48, 342.
[107] Phil. Mag., 1897, 44, 293; 1898, 46, 528.
MAGNETISM, TERRESTRIAL, the science which has for its province the study of the magnetic phenomena of the earth.
§ 1. Terrestrial magnetism has a long history. Its early growth was slow, and considerable uncertainty prevails as to its earliest developments. The properties of the magnet (see [Magnetism]) were to some small extent known to Historical. the Greeks and Romans before the Christian era, and compasses (see [Compass]) of an elementary character seem to have been employed in Europe at least as early as the 12th century. In China and Japan compasses of a kind seem to have existed at a much earlier date, and it is even claimed that the Chinese were aware of the declination of the compass needle from the true north before the end of the 11th century. Early scientific knowledge was usually, however, a mixture of facts, very imperfectly ascertained, with philosophical imaginings. When an early writer makes a statement which to a modern reader suggests a knowledge of the declination of the compass, he may have had no such definite idea in his mind. So far as Western civilization is concerned, Columbus is usually credited with the discovery—in 1492 during his first voyage to America—that the pointing of the compass needle to the true north represents an exceptional state of matters, and that a declination in general exists, varying from place to place. The credit of these discoveries is not, however, universally conceded to Columbus. G. Hellmann[6][A] considers it almost certain that the departure of the needle from the true north was known in Europe before the time of Columbus. There is indirect evidence that the declination of the compass was not known in Europe in the early part of the 15th century, through the peculiarities shown by early maps believed to have been drawn solely by regard to the compass. Whether Columbus was the first to observe the declination or not, his date is at least approximately that of its discovery.
The next fundamental discovery is usually ascribed to Robert Norman, an English instrument maker. In The Newe Attractive (1581) Norman describes his discovery made some years before of the inclination or dip. The discovery was made more or less by accident, through Norman’s noticing that compass needles which were truly balanced so as to be horizontal when unmagnetized, ceased to be so after being stroked with a magnet. Norman devised a form of dip-circle, and found a value for the inclination in London which was at least not very wide of the mark.
Another fundamental discovery, that of the secular change of the declination, was made in England by Henry Gellibrand, professor of mathematics at Gresham College, who described it in his Discourse Mathematical on the Variation of the Magneticall Needle together with its Admirable Diminution lately discovered (1635). The history of this discovery affords a curious example of knowledge long delayed. William Borough, in his Discourse on the Variation of the Compas or Magneticall Needle (1581), gave for the declination at Limehouse in October 1580 the value 11°¼ E. approximately. Observations were repeated at Limehouse, Gellibrand tells us, in 1622 by his colleague Edmund Gunter, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, who found the much smaller value 6° 13′. The difference seems to have been ascribed at first to error on Borough’s part, and no suspicion of the truth seems to have been felt until 1633, when some rough observations gave a value still lower than that found by Gunter. It was not until midsummer 1634 that Gellibrand felt sure of his facts, and yet the change of declination since 1580 exceeded 7°. The delay probably arose from the strength of the preconceived idea, apparently universally held, that the declination was absolutely fixed. This idea, it would appear, derived some of its strength from the positive assertion made on the point by Gilbert of Colchester in his De magnete (1600).