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Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight), M. (search)
us the mariner is guided on his way. The Italian Riccioli, in his work upon Geography and Hydrography, states that before 1270 the French mariners used a magnetized needle, which they kept floating in a small vessel of water supported on two tubes so as not to sink. The magnetic needle is mentioned by Peter Adsiger in a Latin essay in 1269, in which the south pole is said to vary a little to the west; and by Raymond Lully of Majorca, in his Fenix de las Maravillas del Orbe, published in 1286. A passage in the Spanish Leyes de las Partidas of the middle of the thirteenth century runs as follows: The needle which guides the mariner in the dark night, and shows him how to direct his course both in good and bad weather, is the intermediary between the loadstone and the North Star. Dante, about 1300, refers to the needle which points to the star. Marco Polo, the great traveler, was in the service of Kublai Khan, the conqueror of China, from 1274 to 1291, and was concerned in