Alexander Neckham and the Pivoted Compass Needle

Extract

Historians of the mariner's compass (particularly those of the last century) have introduced into the literature of the subject a number of statements which can be shown to be incorrect, or at the least to be extremely doubtful. Unfortunately it is just these ‘facts’ which have been seized upon by later historians and appear in one authoritative book after another. I have myself fallen into one stock trap or another in the past.