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Early Charts and the Origin of the Compass Rose*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

E. G. R. Taylor
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Extract

Sailors as a class may fairly claim to have been the earliest technicians; they were the first, that is to say, to graduate from the stage of simple craftsmanship, involving only the use of tools and rules of thumb, to the employment of instruments and mathematics for solving their problems. For the nautical chart and magnetic compass are instruments of precision while sailing directions, if they are to be useful, must be couched in mathematical language. All these three aids to navigation go back at least seven hundred years, and an Italian ship inventory of 1294 has been quoted which included two charts, a pair of compasses and two lodestones with their accompaniments.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , October 1951 , pp. 351 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1951

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References

1 A specimen of this globe is in the National Maritime Museum.