How did ancient civilisations use magnets?

Answer 1

The Greeks and the Chinese had the early discovery of the properties of lodestone. Pliny wrote of a hill near the river Indus that was made entirely of a stone that attracted iron. For many years magnetite was surrounded by superstition and to have magical powers. It was thought it could heal the sick, frighten evil spirits, and attract and dissolve ships made of iron. People thought there were whole islands of magnetic nature that could attract ships with iron nails and that when ships disappeared at sea some were thought to have been pulled by these islands. Archimedes is suppose to have used lodestones to remove nails from enemy ships and sinking them. The Chinese made the first mariner's compass 4500 years ago which was a splinter of lodestone floating on a surface tension of water. Peregrinus and Gilbert Peter Peregrinus is credited with the first attempt to separate fact from fiction in 1269. He wrote a letter describing everything that was known about magnetite. However, it wasn't until 1600 that William Gilbert made significant progress in understanding magnetism. He was the first to realize that the Earth was a giant magnet and that they could be made by beating wrought iron. In 1820 Hans Christian Oersted showed that magnetism was related to electricity by bringing a wire carrying an electric current close to a magnetic compass which caused the deflection of the compass needle. It is now known that whenever current flows there will be an associated magnetic field in the surrounding space, or more generally that the movement of any charged particle will produce a magnetic field. It was in 1862 that James Clark Maxwell established beyond a doubt that there was a inter relationship between electricity and magnetism.