The Magnet Was An Accidental Discovery

So again, if, before the discovery of the magnet, anyone had said that a certain instrument had been invented by means of which the quarters and points of the heavens could be taken and distinguished with exactness, men would have been carried by their imagination to a variety of conjectures concerning the more exquisite construction of astronomical instruments; but that anything could be discovered agreeing so well in its movements with the heavenly bodies, and yet not a heavenly body itself...