SS Connection

• Essentially, a gyroscope is a top, a self-balancing spinning toy, put to instrumental use. Tops were invented in many different civilizations, including classical Greece, Rome, Indus and China, and the Maori culture a thousand years later. Most of these, though using the same conservation of angular momentum as a gyro, were not utilized as instruments.

• The first known use of such a top as an instrument came in 1743, when John Serson invented the "Whirling speculum"

• The instrument used more like an actual gyroscope was made by German Johann Bohnenberger, who first wrote about it in 1817. At first he called it the "Machine".

• Bohnenberger's machine was based on a rotating massive sphere. In 1832, American Walter R. Johnson developed a similar device that was based on a rotating disc.

Precision on a gyroscope

Elmer A. Sperry built the first automatic pilot for aircraft using gyroscopes.

Elmer A. Sperry started selling gyro-compasses in US

and later in Britain.

The Anschütz Company completed and installed the first automatic pilot for a ship.

First artificial horizon in aircraft used.

A gyroscope in operation with freedom in all three axes.