Kelvin's article on the magnetic centre and Schmidt's one on the optimal eccentric dipole,revisited

Thomson's formulas (1872) that give the position of the magnetic centre of a magnet and the first results on the global geomagnetic field were sufficient to show that the source of this field had a disymmetry in the equatorial plane. To confirm this with Schmidt's (1934) explicit formulas giving the position of the optimal eccentric dipole, numerical calculus was necessary. To obtain their relatively simple formulas, Thomson and Schmidt used lengthy algebra that was avoidable.