who is magnes? where was he from?
Answers
Read on for some enticing tales about the evolution of the modern magnet. Roughly 4,000 years ago, a Greek shepherd named Magnes is said to have been tending his sheep in a region of northern Greece called Magnesia.
Magnes the shepherd, sometimes described as Magnes the shepherd boy, is a mythological figure, possibly based on a real person, who was cited by Pliny the Elder (23 CE – 79 CE) as discovering natural magnetism.
Legend has it that Magnes was herding his sheep in an area of Northern Greece called Magnesia, about 4,000 years ago. Suddenly both, the nails in his shoes and the metal tip of his staff became firmly stuck to the large, black rock on which he was standing. To find the source of attraction he dug up the Earth to find lodestones (load = lead or attract). Lodestones contain magnetite, a natural magnetic material Fe3O4. This type of rock was subsequently named magnetite, after either Magnesia or Magnes himself.