Gyroscope
Technically, a gyroscope is any body that spins on a movable axis, including a child's toy top and the Earth itself. A gyroscope maintains a fixed axis of spin in spite of forces of gravity and magnetic fields, making it useful for navigation. Today's ships and aircraft use weighted spinning wheels to stabilize and guide their vessels. In the 1700s the British ships experimented with a spinning rotor to indicate a stable horizontal reference at sea. To avoid being jostled by rolling waters, the rotor had a pivoted support. During the 1800s, two scientists independently demonstrated the rotation of the Earth using the gyroscope's stability in space. One Scottish scientist, named Sang, was unable to construct an accurate spinning wheel, or rotor. Leon Foucault of France, however, succeeded, and in 1852, demonstrated that the axis of a spinning rotor, with its center in a fixed position but able to point in any direction, appears to revolve 360 degrees in space through the course of one day. This showed that, while the gyroscope maintained its position, the earth revolved beneath it. During the twentieth century, gyroscopes began to be utilized to stabilize ships at sea. German inventor Otto Schlick developed huge gyrostablizers that kept a ship upright in the water despite crashing waves.
A more efficient system using underwater fins and smaller gyroscopes attached to the bottom of a ship was later devised. The invention of the gyrocompass saw yet another application for the gyroscope. Steel ships and onboard electrical systems created a need for a navigational system other than the magnetic compass, whose readings were affected by these factors. Gyroscopes, as predicted by Foucault, solved this problem. Once set in motion, they indicate true, not magnetic, north, even on a rolling ship in heavy seas. Hermann Anschutz-Kaempfe of Germany patented his gyrocompass in 1906; Elmer Sperry of the United States successfully deomonstrated his for the U.S. Navy in 1911. In aircraft, gyroscopes are navigational aids. They provide artificial horizons and better control the airplane for a path true to course. Sperry invented an automatic pilot device that used four gyroscopes and won a prize from the French government in 1914 for an aircraft stabilization system. American Charles Stark Draper, during the 1940s, developed inertial navigation and guidance systems depending only on internal sensors to navigate. His method has been used on warships, planes, and in rocket and missile guidance. Gyroscopes have become essential in space, allowing the craft to navigate from its actual position in space rather than relying on external information from radio signals or celestial bodies.
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