Compass

The compass was invented in China in the 2nd century. The compass can help people not get lost and also help people of they do get lost. The compass is still given and sold around the world. It was originally used for geomancy which is the act of configuration. Configuration is the arrangement of elements. But the compass was used for configuration of buildings or other structures. The compass was also use for fortune telling, not how we use it today for navigation. Once the compass was used for navigations the global and historical impacts beyond China were that people no longer had to use landmarks to navigate. They had something that could now help them find their way no mater where they were. They were less likely to get lost and they had an understanding of direction and they could now travel where there were not as many geographical features. Long ship voyages were now being taken because of the compass. Some ship voyages were used to transport things and produce to trade and compasses also allowed people to go long distances to trade which eventually spread knowledge. Compasses also helped with innovations in topics such as physics and engineering. We still use compasses today to navigate if we are lost but not as much as we used to because now we can use modern technology. There were and still are many different types of compasses. Some types of compasses include; The South Pointer, The Wet compass, and the Magnetic compass. Although compasses help out there are some problems that accrued once compasses were being used for navigation. The problems were that there was a change in the angular difference, meaning that there was now two norths, magnetic north and true (geographic) north. When there were skies with no clouds people could find the geographic north using the sun or moon. When there were not clear skies no one could see the sun or the moon which made it difficult to navigate, if you were going to read the compass it may not be correct. In the Atlantic, near northern latitudes,the difference was considerable, which caused problems in people's sense of direction.  Although these problems did occur the compass was still used. Compasses impacted a small portion of the world at first but then once discovered that they could be used for constant and relevant navigation the out brake of compass use was phenomenal.