=A.D. 1576.=--Norman (Robert), a manufacturer of compass needles at Wapping, is the first who determined the _dip or inclination_ to the earth of the magnetic needle in London, by means of a dipping needle (inclinatorium) of his own making. Five years later (1581) Norman publishes a pamphlet “The Newe Attractive, containing a short discourse of the Magnes or Lodestone, and amongest other his vertues, of a newe discouered secret, and subtill propertie concernyng the Declinyng of the Needle, touched therewith, under the Plaine of the Horizon ...” from which is taken the following: “Hauing made many and diuers compasses and using alwaies to finish and end them before I touched the needle, I found continuallie that after I had touched the yrons with the stone, that presentlie the north point thereof woulde bend or decline downwards under the horizon in some quantitie; in so much that to the flie of the compass, which was before levell, I was still constrained to put some small piece of ware on the south point and make it equall againe ...” (Weld, “History of the Royal Society,” 1848, Vol. II. p. 432). In the fourth chapter of his work, Norman describes the mode of making the particular instrument with which he was enabled to establish the first accurate measurement of the dip “which for this citie of London, I finde, by exact obseruations to be about 71 degrees 50 mynutes.” Whewell thus alludes to several investigations in the same line: “Other learned men have, in long navigations, observed the differences of magnetic variations, as Thomas Hariot, Robert Hues, Edward Wright, Abraham Kendall, all Englishmen: others have invented magnetic instruments and convenient modes of observation such as are requisite for those who take long voyages, as William Borough, in his book concerning the variation of the compass; William Barlo, in his ‘Supplement’; Robert Norman, in his ‘Newe Attractive.’ This is that Robert Norman (a good seaman and an ingenious artificer) who first discovered the _dip_ of magnetic iron” (“Enc. Metr.,” p. 738; read also paragraph 366 of J. F. W. Herschel’s “Prelim. Disc.,” 1855). In Book I. chap. i. of Gilbert’s “De Magnete,” he says that Norman posits a point and place toward which the magnet looks but whereto it is not drawn: toward which magnetized iron, according to him, is collimated but which does not attract it. He alludes again to this “respective point” (Book IV. chaps. i. and vi.), saying that Norman originated the idea of the “respective point” looking, as it were, toward hidden principles, and held that toward this the magnetized needle ever turns, and not toward any attractional point: but he was greatly in error, albeit he exploded the ancient false opinion about attraction. Gilbert then proceeds to show how this theory is proved by Norman. The original passage in Norman’s “Newe Attractive” (London, 1581, Chap. VI) is as follows: