The magnetic compass sailed westward for centuries out of China, until even Atlantic mariners used it widely. In the round year of 1600, a prominent physician of Elizabethan London, William Gilbert, authored--in Latin--the first classic of that springtime century of science, under the grand title About Magnets and Magnetic Bodies, and that Great Magnet, the earth,... & demonstrated by experiments. That English rendering is still in print (Dover paperback). No wonder Galileo prized Gilbert's amazing work, 10 years earlier than Galileo's own celebrated Latin classic on the telescopic sky.
This article was originally published with the title Anniversary of Needles.