Naval Gear Orienteer

  • Unique Paper ID: 145748
  • PageNo: 437-440
  • Abstract:
  • Early man was an inveterate traveler, and he often encountered situations in which natural landmarks and directional references failed him. The south-pointing chariot (or carriage) was an ancient Chinese two-wheeled vehicle that carried a movable pointer to indicate the south, no matter how the chariot turned. Usually, the pointer took the form of a doll or figure with an outstretched arm. The chariot was supposedly used as a compass for navigation and may also have had other purposes. This report describes the design and construction of a working model of a south-pointing carriage based upon a reasonable conjecture as to the working principles of the original instrument. Clues derived from ancient texts were used where applicable. This report presents a systematic approach for the reconstruction of all possible topological structures of lost ancient Chinese mechanisms. This paper aims at presenting the approach that utilizes the idea of creative mechanism, design methodology to converge the divergent conceptions from the results of literature studies to a focused scope, and then applies the mechanical evolution and variation method to obtain feasible reconstruction design concepts that meet the scientific and technological standards of the subjects’ time period.
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Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{145748,
        author = {Harshal Nagtode  and Abhishek Shanbhag  and Nikhil Naik },
        title = {Naval Gear Orienteer },
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {},
        volume = {4},
        number = {11},
        pages = {437-440},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=145748},
        abstract = {Early man was an inveterate traveler, and he often encountered situations in which natural landmarks and directional references failed him. The south-pointing chariot (or carriage) was an ancient Chinese two-wheeled vehicle that carried a movable pointer to indicate the south, no matter how the chariot turned. Usually, the pointer took the form of a doll or figure with an outstretched arm. The chariot was supposedly used as a compass for navigation and may also have had other purposes. This report describes the design and construction of a working model of a south-pointing carriage based upon a reasonable conjecture as to the working principles of the original instrument. Clues derived from ancient texts were used where applicable. This report presents a systematic approach for the reconstruction of all possible topological structures of lost ancient Chinese mechanisms. This paper aims at presenting the approach that utilizes the idea of creative mechanism, design methodology to converge the divergent conceptions from the results of literature studies to a focused scope, and then applies the mechanical evolution and variation method to obtain feasible reconstruction design concepts that meet the scientific and technological standards of the subjects’ time period.},
        keywords = {mechanical, design, south pointer, magnetic compass, gear, arrangement, navigation.},
        month = {},
        }

Cite This Article

Nagtode, H., & Shanbhag, A., & Naik, N. (). Naval Gear Orienteer . International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 4(11), 437–440.

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