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to Needham, the Chinese in the Song dynasty and following Yuan dynasty made use of a dry compass. Instead of a floating needle, it used a suspended wooden frame in the shape of a turtle, containing a lodestone sealed in wax: when rotated, the tail would rotate to point north. The 14th-century European compass-card, with box frame and dry pivot needle, was in the 16th century adopted in China via Japanese pirates; nevertheless,

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