Chapter 287 Compass needle and nautical chart

The compass is one of the four great inventions in ancient my country. my country is not only the first country in the world to invent the compass, but also the first country to use the compass in navigation. my country's maritime traffic has already started a long time ago.More than 2,200 years ago, Qin Shihuang sent people on large-scale voyages in large ships in order to find immortal medicines.After the Qin and Han Dynasties, due to the development of social productivity, my country's navigation industry gradually developed.In the Jin Dynasty, there were ships that could carry 200 people.In the Tang Dynasty, some sea-going ships were twenty feet long and could carry six or seven hundred people.At that time, the scope of activities of Chinese seagoing ships stretched from Guangzhou in the east to the Persian Gulf in the west, and they were an important force in maritime transportation among Southeast Asian countries.

In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the government sent Zheng He on a large-scale voyage.From 1405 to 1433 AD, a total of seven voyages.At that time, my country referred to the present Nanyang Islands and the Indian Ocean as the "Western Ocean".Zheng He's seven voyages to the "Western Ocean" are very famous in history. The fleet led by Zheng He had a total of more than 27,000 people and more than 60 large ships. These large ships were called "treasure ships".The largest "treasure ship", forty feet long and eighteen feet wide, was the largest ship on the sea at that time.

Before the invention of the compass, navigating the oceans was very difficult.In the Northern Song Dynasty, after the compass was invented, people on ships looked at the stars at night, the sun during the day, and the compass when it was cloudy and rainy, in order to identify the geographical direction. In the Southern Song Dynasty, navigators at that time had already used the "needle plate" to sail, which shows that the compass and compass had been combined at that time.This kind of compass is made of wood or copper, and the directions such as southeast, northwest, etc. are engraved around the compass.As long as people align the direction pointed by the compass with the due south engraved on the disk, they can easily identify the direction of navigation.

Zheng He's ship had compass needles and nautical charts on board, as well as technicians who specialized in determining the direction.The fleet has been to many places in Indochina Peninsula, Nanyang Islands, India, Persia and Arabia, as far as the east coast of Africa, passing through more than 30 countries.In such many large-scale voyages, the compass needle played a considerable role. With a compass, people slowly figured out a route in the middle of the voyage.During the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, there were many books in our country that recorded the routes to overseas countries.Because these routes were obtained by relying on the compass, they were called "needle routes" at that time.During the Ming Dynasty, nautical charts also appeared.Zheng He carried this nautical chart with him on many voyages.

As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, the Arabs learned the method of making compass from China and passed this method to Europe.At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century, some countries in Arabia and Europe also began to use the compass for navigation. After the compass was introduced to Europe, it also played a great role in the development of European navigation.From the end of the 15th century to the beginning of the 16th century, European navigators opened up new sea routes, discovered the American continent, and completed the voyage around the earth. These are all famous events in the history of the world.The magic weapon they use to identify the direction is the compass.