The Mechanism of China's South-Pointing Carriage

H. Douglas Garner

Abstract:	Early man was an inveterate traveler, and he often encountered situations in which natural landmarks and directional references failed him. His first successful attempts to devise an artificial heading reference to aid him in his journeys are generally conceded to have been made in ancient China. References to these instruments in original texts are sparse and confusing and are sometimes attributed to legend rather than to fact. The “south pointer” mentioned in these writings was thought by early researchers to refer to the magnetic compass, but modem scholars feel that there have been errors in interpretation, and that the magnetic compass was not invented until a much later era. The south-pointers referred to in early writings are now thought to have been purely mechanical instruments, using intelligence derived from their motion over the ground to keep track of a preset heading, and usable only for land navigation over China’s vast plains. Available texts tend to support this theory, but do not give enough information to reconstruct one of these instruments with any assurance of fidelity. This paper relates the author’s modest investigations into this area of ancient lore, and describes his successful efforts to design and construct a small-scale working replica south-pointer based upon one of the more reasonable conjectures as to its original principles of operation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1992) June 29 - 1, 1992 ANA Westin Hotel Dayton, OH
Pages:	429 - 434
Cite this article:	Updated citation: Published in NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation
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