So far, so good. This is indeed a model of a south-pointing chariot, an idea apparently invented in China several times between 2600BCE and 500. None of these survived the political upheavals of the time and the only detailed description, by a third-century writer called Fu Xuan doesn't work because either the author didn't know or wanted to keep the crucial parts secret. Subsequent historians disputed how it worked (many thought it might have been a magnetic compass) or doubted whether it ever really existed. A distinguished car designer – which is why this is in Autopuzzles – was asked whether a mechanical solution was possible using the technology of ancient China and he made this model by hand using only a penknife. Who was he?
(He incorporated in his design a mechanism found in most cars which was discovered by another famous engineer in a “eureka!” moment in the 1870s, but as it later turned out had been discovered independently many times earlier for different purposes, as clever inventions often are.)
