The earliest discovery of the unusual properties of magnetite (to attract iron pieces) and amber (to be sandwiched with cloth wrapped in pieces of papyrus) come from the ancient times. The first discovery of the practical use of magnetite is a compass, the first records in Europe dating from the end of XII. century. Centuries later, the first scientific research of magnetite began. The English physician William Gilbert releases De Magnete’s work in 1600, which contains all the known cognitions of magnetism. However, it took more than two centuries for Danish physicist Oersted, in 1820, to find out that an electric current is a magnetic field, and that people learned how to generate a controlled magnetic field. Then there are a number of discoveries related to the nature of magnetism and its use as well as the structure of matter. The culmination of this process is the development of quantum physics and the final explanation of the nature of magnetism in the 1930s. Without technology based on magnetic materials, today’s world would look unrecognizably different.