pivoted.
The earliest description of them is about 1604. The term _binnacle_,
originally _bittacle_, is a corruption of the Portuguese abitacolo, to
denote the housing enclosing the compass, probably originating with the
Portuguese navigators.

The improvement of the compass has been but a slow process. _The Libel
of English Policie_, a poem of the first half of the 15th century, says
with reference to Iceland (chap. x.)--

"Out of Bristowe, and costes many one,
Men haue practised by nedle and by stone
Thider wardes within a litle while."

Hakluyt, _Principal Navigations_, p. 201 (London, 1599).

From this it would seem that the compasses used at that time by English
mariners were of a very primitive description. Barlowe, in his treatise
_Magnetical Advertisements_, printed in 1616 (p. 66), complains that
"the Compasse needle, being the most admirable and usefull instrument of
the whole world, is both amongst ours and other nations for the most
part, so bungerly and absurdly contrived, as nothing more." The form he
recommends for the needle is that of "a true circle, having his Axis
going out beyond the circle, at each end narrow and narrower, unto a
reasonable sharpe point, and being pure steele as the circle it selfe
is, having in the middest a convenient receptacle to place the capitell
in." In 1750 Dr Gowan Knight found that the needles of merchant-ships
were made of two pieces of steel bent in the middle and united in the
shape of a rhombus, and proposed to substitute straight steel bars of
small breadth, suspended edgewise and hardened throughout. He also
showed that the Chinese mode of suspending the needle conduces most to
sensibility. In 1820 Peter Barlow reported to the Admiralty that half
the compasses in the British Navy were mere lumber and ought to be
destroyed. He introduced a pattern having four or five parallel straight
strips of magnetized steel fixed under a card, a form which remained the
standard admiralty type until the introduction of the modern Thomson
(Kelvin) compass in 1876. (F. H. B.; S. P. T.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Adamas in India reperitur ... Ferrum occulta quadam natura ad se
trahit. Acus ferrea postquam adamantem contigerit, ad stellam
septentrionalem ... semper convertitur, unde valde necessarius est
navigantibus in mari.

[2] Sicut acus per naturam vertitur ad septentrionem dum sit tacta a
magnete.--Sicut acus nautica dirigit marinarios in su