Gyrocompass - History and Usage

Instruments for detecting orientation or position have always

represented a very desirable technology that could change the way
trade, navigation, warfare, land surveys and many other things function.
Naval navigation represented one of the big reasons why many
governments, scientific institutes, and independent inventors put so
much time and effort into discovering new ways that could help ship
locate their exact position into open seas and enable them to travel
easily over very long distances away from the coasts that could be used
as landmarks for their journeys. While the magnetic compasses and
various other devices that used the position of the sun to calculate
position and orientation of the ship in the sea were useful, they were not
100% reliable all the time and they could not be used in all situations
(most notably, the sun and solar compasses were useless if the ship
experienced heavy clouds over period of several days). Even though
magnetic compasses were accurate (distinction between true north of
the Earth and magnetic north that they pointed to was not problematic
in all but some most limiting cases when the ships or land parties were
very close to the polar regions), those compasses started experiencing
erratic behavior when they started being used on ships that were made
from metal hulls. Metal from the ship construction interfered with the
way compass worked, twisting the magnetic field of the earth around the
ship and thus changing the direction of the compass.

To combat this, many investors around the world tackled the problem of
the naval navigation and came to several non-magnetic solutions, many
not good enough for regular use but few who had tremendous potential.
The most successful one was without the doubt gyrocompass,
complicated but very precise non-magnetic compassthat was based on a
technology that could detect and react to the rotation of the Earth (thus
not mislead ships by pointing to the magnetic north which can naturally
change position over time), and maintain the position pointed toward
the trough north even though any ship rotation. Since gyrocompass was
not relying on any magnetic readings, it could be safely used on metal-
hull ships, although the reduced amount of rotation very near the polar
regions would make even these devices unreliable. They would also work
without issues during bad weather and night.

The history of gyrocompass started in the mid to late 1800s. The first
model was created the French inventor Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault in
1852. After it followed several failed attempts in the form of gyrostat
made by mathematical physicist and engineer William Thomson (1st
Baron of Kelvin) in 1880, and Arthur Krebs' early gyrocompass that
enabled French submarine ability to travel automatically in a straight line
(which was one of the earliest examples of naval autopilot capability).

The first patent for working model of gyrocompass was awarded to

Marinus Gerardus van den Bos in 1885. However, since his design was
not practical for use on naval ships, the first usable design was provided
by German inventor Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe in 1906. After a period
of testing, his device was successfully integrated into the German
Imperial Navy in 1908. United States ships quickly adopted the
gyrocompasses that were produced by the Elmer Ambrose Sperry who
patented his design in 1908. Devices made by Sperry Gyroscope
Company were placed on all US Navy ships during the World War I, and
some naval projects also started using gyrocompasses as means in
creation automated movement of the ships and submarines. After the
WW1, gyrocompass technology was regularly used on ships, submarines,
airplanes and zeppelins. In Europe, commercial sale of the gyrocompass
started in 1913.

History[edit]

The first, not yet practical,[7] form of gyrocompass was patented in 1885 by Marinus Gerardus van
den Bos.[7] A usable gyrocompass was invented in 1906 in Germany byHermann Anschütz-Kaempfe,
and after successful tests in 1908 became widely used in the German Imperial Navy.[2][7][8] Anschütz-
Kaempfe founded the company Anschütz & Co. in Kiel, to mass produce gyrocompasses; the
company is today Raytheon Anschütz GmbH.[9] The gyrocompass was an important invention for
nautical navigation because it allowed accurate determination of a vessel’s location at all times
regardless of the vessel’s motion, the weather and the amount of steel used in the construction of
the ship.[4]

In the United States, Elmer Ambrose Sperry produced a workable gyrocompass system (1908:
patent #1,242,065), and founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company. The unit was adopted by the U.S.
Navy (1911[3]), and played a major role in World War I. The Navy also began using Sperry's "Metal
Mike": the first gyroscope-guided autopilot steering system. In the following decades, these and
other Sperry devices were adopted by steamships such as the RMS Queen Mary, airplanes, and the
warships of World War II. After his death in 1930, the Navy named the USS Sperry after him.

Meanwhile, in 1913, C. Plath (a Hamburg, Germany-based manufacturer of navigational equipment

including sextants and magnetic compasses) developed the first gyrocompass to be installed on a
commercial vessel. C. Plath sold many gyrocompasses to the Weems’ School for Navigation in
Annapolis, MD, and soon the founders of each organization formed an alliance and became Weems
& Plath.[10]

The 1889 Dumoulin-Krebs gyroscope

Before the success of the gyrocompass, several attempts had been made in Europe to use a
gyroscope instead. By 1880, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) tried to propose a gyrostat (tope) to the
British Navy. In 1889, Arthur Krebs adapted an electric motor to the Dumoulin-Froment marine
gyroscope, for the French Navy. That gave the Gymnote submarine the ability to keep a straight line
while underwater for several hours, and it allowed her to force a naval block in 1890.

In 1923 Max Schuler published his paper containing his observation that if a gyrocompass
possessed Schuler tuning such that it had an oscillation period of 84.4 minutes (which is the orbital
period of a notional satellite orbiting around the Earth at sea level), then it could be rendered
insensitive to lateral motion and maintain directional stability.[11]
 gyro compass was invented by ELMER AMBROSE SPERRY

Elmer Ambrose Sperry, Sr. (October 12, 1860 – June 16, 1930) was
an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous as co-inventor, with Herman Anschütz-
Kaempfe of the gyrocompass and as founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company.[3] His compasses
and stabilizers were adopted by the United States Navy and used in both world wars. He also
worked closely with Japanese companies and the Japanese government and was honored after his
death with a biography.[4] He was known as the "father of modern navigation technology."[5]

A gyroscope consists of a rapidly spinning wheel mounted in a frame that enables the wheel to
tilt freely in any direction. The amount of momentum allows the wheel to maintain its “attitude”
even when the whole device is turned or rotated.
These devices have been used to solve problems arising in such areas as sailing and
navigation. For example, a gyroscope aboard a ship maintains its orientation even while the
ship is rolling. Among other things, this allows the extent of the roll to be measured accurately.
Moreover, the spin axis of a free gyroscope can be adjusted to point toward true north. It will
(with some exceptions) stay that way despite changes in the direction of a vehicle in which it is
mounted. Gyroscopic effects were employed in the design of various objects long before the
theory behind them was formally known. A classic example is a child’s top, which balances,
seemingly in defiance of gravity, as long as it continues to spin. Boomerangs and flying disks
derive stability and accuracy from the spin imparted by the thrower. Likewise, the accuracy of
rifles improved when barrels were manufactured with internal spiral grooves that caused the
emerging bullet to spin.
In 1852, the French inventor Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault built the first gyroscope, a measuring
device consisting of a rapidly spinning wheel mounted within concentric rings that allowed the
wheel to move freely about two axes. This device, like the Foucault pendulum, was used to
demonstrate the rotation of the earth around its axis, since the spinning wheel, which is not
fixed, retains its orientation in space while the earth turns under it. The gyroscope had a related
interesting property: As it continued to spin, the force of the earth’s rotation caused its axis to
rotate gradually until it was oriented parallel to the earth’s axis, that is, in a north-south direction.
It is this property that enables the gyroscope to be used as a compass.

lthough Elmer Ambrose Sperry, born in 1860, had only a grade school education as a
child in rural New York, the equipment used on local farms piqued his interest in
machinery and he learned about technology on his own. He attended a local teachers’
college, and graduating in 1880, he was determined to become an inventor.
He was especially interested in the application of electricity. He designed his own arc
lighting system and opened the Sperry Electric Light, Motor, and Car Brake Company to
sell it, changing its name to Sperry Electric Company in 1887. He made such progress
in devising electric mining equipment, electric brakes for automobiles and streetcars,
and his own electric car that General Electric bought him out.
In 1900 Sperry opened a laboratory in Washington, D.C., and continued research on a
gyroscope that he began in 1896. After more than a decade he patented his device, and
after successful trials aboard the USS Warden, he established the Sperry Gyroscope
Company in 1910, later supplying the American, British, and Russian navies as well as
commercial ships. In 1914 he successfully demonstrated a gyrostabilizer for aircraft and
expanded his company to manufacture aeronautical technology. Before he sold the
company in 1926 he had registered more than four hundred patents. Sperry died in
Brooklyn in 1930. scope, and suspension system were mounted in a frame that allowed
the apparatus to remain stable despite the pitch and roll of the ship.
In 1906, the German navy installed a prototype of the Anschutz-Kaempfe gyrocompass
on the battleship Undine and subjected it to exhaustive tests under simulated battle
conditions, sailing the ship under forced draft and suddenly reversing the engines,
changing the position of heavy turrets and other mechanisms, and firing heavy guns. In
conditions under which a magnetic compass would have been worthless, the
gyrocompass proved a satisfactory navigational tool, and the results were impressive
enough to convince the German navy to undertake installation of gyrocompasses in
submarines and heavy battleships, including the battleship Deutschland.
Elmer Ambrose Sperry, a New York inventor intimately associated with pioneer
electrical development, was independently working on a design for a gyroscopic
compass at about the same time. In 1907, he patented a gyrocompass consisting of a
single rotor mounted within two concentric shells, suspended by fine piano wire from a
frame mounted on gimbals. The rotor of the Sperry compass operated in a vacuum,
which enabled it to rotate more rapidly. The Sperry gyrocompass was in use on larger
American battleships and submarines on the eve of World War I (1914-1918).