Shen Kuo's Dream Pool Essays
The first account of the compass — and its slightly wrong north
In retirement the scholar-official Shen Kuo wrote down everything he knew, including the first description of the magnetic compass and the observation that the needle does not point exactly north — plus the story of the commoner Bi Sheng, who invented movable type of baked clay in the 1040s.
Wikipedia (English) · 11th century
Did you know
A Chinese scholar described the magnetic compass a century before Europe — and noticed at once that it doesn't point quite north. Shen Kuo wrote about it in 1088; Europe's first mention dates from 1187. Share →
Movable type was invented 400 years before Gutenberg — in clay. In the 1040s the Chinese commoner Bi Sheng cut characters into sticky clay and baked them hard, as the scholar Shen Kuo recorded. Share →
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1066 Battle of Hastings — 22 years earlier
- 1066 Halley's Comet over England — 22 years earlier
- 1077 Walk to Canossa — 11 years earlier
- c. 1088 University of Bologna — same year
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1113 Vladimir Monomakh in Kiev — 25 years later
- c. 1113 The Primary Chronicle — 25 years later
Middle East
- 1071 Battle of Manzikert — 17 years earlier
- 1099 Crusaders capture Jerusalem — 11 years later
Africa
- c. 1070 The Almoravids found Marrakesh — 18 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Omar Khayyam (aged 40)
- Henry IV (aged 38)
- Vladimir II Monomakh (aged 35)
- Vsevolod I (aged 58)
- Shen Kuo (aged 57)
- Sviatopolk II (aged 38)
- Philip I (aged 36)
- Nestor the Chronicler (aged 32)
- William II Rufus (aged 32)
- Al-Ghazali (aged 30)