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The story of the compass is shrouded in mystery and myth, yet most will agree it begins around the time of the birth of Christ in ancient China. A mysterious lodestone whose powers affected metal was known to the Chinese emperor. When this piece of metal was suspended in water, it always pointed north. This unexplainable occurrence led to the stone's use in feng shui, the Chinese art of finding the right location. However, it was the Italians, more than a thousand years later, who discovered the ultimate destiny of the lodestone and unleashed its formidable powers. In Amalfi sometime in the twelfth century, the compass was born, crowning the Italians as the new rulers of the seas and heralding the onset of the modern world. Retracing the roots of the compass and sharing the fascinating story of navigation through the ages, The Riddle of the Compass is Aczel at his most entertaining and insightful.
Lost the compass
| Customer Rating:   | All over the globe, extremely well written and edited, but the compass is a mere bi-line in this book. Tag it: a brief and lovely history of Venice; encounters with Marco Polo and family; a quick look into ancient China - and that would echo Aczel's view of time. "Ancient", "Old" and Medieval" are amorphic time-spans he uses indiscriminately, and the result is flawed statements: "the - - - Israelites were seafaring people as well". NOT (pg. 10); Jonah (same page) was but a passenger, not a sailor; and the commerce between Aqaba/Eilat and the Queen of Shaba is a prime example of sea-hugging sailing.
and on Pg. 11: "- - - we can deduce that many ships of many nations regularly arrived in Egypt, even during very early times". can you be more unclear, Prof.?
OK, so this is followed by: Roman times, St. Paul's shipwreck (as evidence?), and from there we jump to the - Hawaiian Islands.
To really muffle the issue, Prof. Aczel uses as many terms without explanations as possible (let alone give a list of notes that any academic can follow), and then gives the following erudite statement: "It is important to understand that navigation in ancient times was much less precise than it is today". (pg. 27). DAHHHH.
Much talk about Amafi - but no map to show where it is (or Rome, or Genoa, for that matter...). The map on pg. 108 has Venice - and Pisa!
Attribution is poor. Or should I say vindictive: Acknowledgments ARE read, and the curator of the National Maritime Museum in Haifa DOES have a name, I am sure! After all, is with from there that the obscure - and unrelated - Chinese Jade disk came, though WHY it is included is unclear.
You see, according to this book, people sailed blind - then came the compass. Oh, yes, some knew about stars, astrolabes, and maybe other devices, but this book claims that it was the COMPASS that invented seamanship.
BTW, the compass was not an invention but a discovery. A natural force can not be invented |
I'm a bit disappointed
| Customer Rating: | It started out strong then the author began to continuously repeat himself and the book became reminiscent of a section out a high school text book. He was very vague about most if not all his accounts of significant accomplishments through the use of the compass. When it comes down to it the book seemed a bit rushed and lacked the detail most readers would like from a book tackling such a "riddle". Overall it's a short enough read providing a few interesting points and tid-bits that may warrant your precious time.
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Fascinating Tale of Discovery & Use of the Compass
| Customer Rating: | The "Riddle" is well researched and written in a down to earth, flowing, enjoyable, fascinating and educational journey of discovery. Good illustrations help clarify text descriptions. To emphasize the *importance of the compass to navigation*, there is a quote from an English Augustinian monk, Alexander Neckam (1157-1217) from his book, `De Naturis Rerun':
"The sailors, moreover, as they sail over the sea, when in cloudy weather they can no longer profit by the light of the sun, or when the world is wrapped in the darkness of the shades of night, and they are ignorant to what point of the compass their ship's course is directed, they touch the magnet with a needle. This then whirls round in a circle until, when its motion ceases, its point looks direct to the north." (p 30-31)
Aczel opens the story of the "Riddle" by first relating his childhood memories of growing up on a passenger ship in the Mediterranean where learned how to navigate from his father, the ship's captain. "As the years went by, I developed a feel for the compass and the wheel" (p 2)
This gives him a unique perspective in tracing the origins of the compass and the discovery of magnetism and it's application to the navigational compass. So years later, when he set sail on the journey to find the origins of the compass, he was first directed to Amalfi, Italy where the first European invention of the compass was supposedly credited to a man named Flavio Gioia in 1302. Although the city of Amalfi boasts of the discovery of the compass with statues and the like, it doesn't take long to find serious flaws in this legend and the unfolding of that story makes for a fascinating tale in itself.
The true history of magnetism and the compass is presented in a fascinating overview that also includes the historical use of the stars, reading of ocean currents, weather and migrating birds that helped early mariners in navigation over the centuries.
The Chinese are credited by most historians as being the discoverors of magnetism and this possibly as far back as 1000 BC. They found that magnetic lodestone had an effect on metal and when a piece of spoon-shaped metal was magnetised by it and then placed in water, it always pointed South. Initially, this discovery was used for divination and land coordinates, but eventually was adapted to sailing for navigation.
From the ancient Chinese, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans to the modern times, the story of the compass and so much more is thoroughly covered. This is an excellent read!
As a companion to Aczel's fine book and for more compass info, I also recommend "The Compass" by Paula Z. Hogan, 1980. Although written for children, it is informative and suitable for all ages and backgrounds and in 60 pages, packs more compass facts than any other book I have seen.
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Interesting but Left Some Explanations Open
| Customer Rating: | The topic was certainly interesting, but the device is so simple that it's a little difficult to go much deeper than the author did. He certainly cites enough documents, but, not too unexpectedly, they seem to talk to human events rather than of anything technical. It's good to know about how the sixteen points came about, but he offered no explanation about what I consider the somewhat bizarre naming of the points. Maybe I'm missing something, but is the scheme for name ordering the points between, say, N and E, the same as from, say, E to S?
The section of Flavio Gioia left me almost as confused about the supposed inventor of the 'modern' (1302?!!) compass as the Italians who erected a statue in 1902 to this apparently fictional character. The name Gioia appears from nowhere.
I would like to have more detail about how early navigators actually did some of their navigation, but what he did supply was still interesting. Not too long ago I was in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and saw some interesting devices the Scandinavians used. Unfortunately, a huge crowd of students made it difficult to really figure out and even see what the exhibit had to offer. It would have been good to see the detail offered there expressed in such a book as this.
I found a section near the very end of the book a little puzzling. He talks about how the Chinese were very secretive about their discoveries, and mentions they had a cure for malaria for some two centuries. Only recently has it become known to the West. It's based on a herb that's not only found in China but in N. America. He never mentions what it is! This is somehow how I felt about the book. It seemed to leave the door open for other answers to items discussed in the book. |
Amateurish and poorly researched.
| Customer Rating: | I'll put it simply: this is a poor history of the compass. For almost ten years, publishers have been throwing money at anyone who might attempt to repeat the success of Dava Sobel's 'Longitude', and here we see the worst outcome of that lust for success. This book is worthless.
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