The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World

In recent years, it's become fashionable for writers to "discover" a single tiny event that became the catalyst that produced the modern world; thus, Aczel asserts the compass was "the invention that changed the world."Sure, and the Irish saved civilization, spacemen crashed at Roswell and when a butterfly flaps its wings in Rio de Janeiro it launches a hurricane that devastates Miami.It's an old idea, nicely expressed by George Herbert (1593-1633) when he wrote, "For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost . . . ." and thus the battle and the kingdom. It's the ultimate expression of personal ego, the belief that some tiny action of mine may change the whole course of history. (If the compass was one such example, then what might this book review accomplish ?)Sadly, Azcel doesn't prove his point. He stumbles erratically through history, citing numerous interesting events without ever explaining why one invention suddenly prompted Europeans to build great fleets of merchant ships. Compass or not, no one can trade without having something to trade. Europe, at the time the compass was discovered by Europeans, was on the verge of a commercial explosion.For a modern example, look at the Internet. It's based on transistors; the basic function of the transistor was evident at the turn of the century when a "cat's whisker" was used on a piece of galena to pick up the earliest radio signals. So, do we say the "crystal radio" was the spark that produced today's computers ? Likewise, Xerox in its Palo Alto Research Center invented many of the components of modern personal computers -- but it took a variety of other companies to develop these ideas into actual hardware.The idea of the compass had been around for a long time; the sudden commercial expansion of Europe put a premium on every innovation that would facilitate and expand trade. The compass was one such invention; likewise, shipbuilding, banking, the legal system, many things changed dramatically to meet the new needs. The compass was like modern Global Positioning Satellites -- a great idea forecast by Arthur C. Clarke in 1946 but which didn't come into use until the 1990s -- a lot of other factors helped make satellites a reality.Clarke foresaw the potential of satellites; thousands of other contributors made them a practical reality. With or without Clarke, we'd still have satellites; without the thousands of other contributors, they would never have been developed. Aczel misses this element of invention, that it is driven by the needs of society rather than by the idle curiosity of clever people who have nothing better to do with their time."Look folks, I've invented the compass," Aczel would have you believe that Flavio Gioia told the sailors of Amalfi in AD 1302. In response, they replied, "Okay, let's have a commercial explosion and start trading throughout the Mediterranean."Not really, eh folks ? The airplane didn't invent modern globalization, it simply made it easier. Likewise, 700 years ago, the compass made it much easier and safer for Europeans to do something they already wanted to do. That's why it remained European technology for so long -- other societies didn't have similar incentives, and thus didn't need these sophisticated technologies.Had Aczel broadened the scope of his basic idea, his book would have been immeasurably better. He started with a good topic, but couldn't see beyond the limits of his own compass dial. He forgot that every now and then the helmsman needs to lift his eyes from the compass to make sure that an iceberg, another ship or a shoreline isn't looming dead ahead. Or, as the mate on a ship told me when I was a helmsman on a ship crossing the North Atlantic, "Keep an eye out for the Azores, we don't want to run into them."Likewise, Azcel should have looked around. His book is a good idea that is limited by a lack of logical context. He needed a compass himself to give this book the direction it is otherwise lacking.

Amir Aczel spent his childhood on the Mediterranean Sea--literally--sailing around in and sometimes steering a passenger ship that was captained by his father. This romantic personal history makes Aczel particularly suited to tell the story of the compass, which so improved navigation in the late thirteenth century that it sparked a commercial revolution and made possible the Age of Exploration that was to follow.In his highly readable narrative Aczel provides a brief history of navigation centered on the compass--from navigation by stars and sounding lines to the naval supremacy of the Venetians in the 14th and 15th centuries to the masterful sailing of the great explorers--da Gama, Magellan--who opened up the world in the 15th and 16th centuries. We learn, too, about the early invention of the compass in China, where it was evidently not used at sea, and of its perfection as a naval instrument in the Italian city of Amalfi.The Riddle of the Compass is at its best when Aczel discusses the actual "riddle" to which the title of the book refers: the question of the historicity of a certain Flavio Gioia, whom the people of Amalfi credit with having invented the mariner's compass in 1302. Most interestingly, the question of this Gioia's existence involves the correct interpretation of a single Latin phrase, a reference to the invention of the compass in an early 16th century commentary on the poetry of Lucrezio Caro.Readers of Dava Sobel's popular book Longitude, which tells the story of the invention of the naval chronometer, will enjoy Amir Aczel's equally readable history of the compass.Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

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.

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