Dianna Chason
CREATIVE_WRITING
CREATIVE_WRITING_258_PAPER
A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc
and the rotation of the Earth (or another planetary body if used elsewhere in the universe)
to find geographical direction automatically.A gyrocompass makes use of one of the seven
fundamental ways to determine the heading of a vehicle.A gyroscope is an essential
component of a gyrocompass, but they are different devices; a gyrocompass is built to use
the effect of gyroscopic precession, which is a distinctive aspect of the general gyroscopic
effect.Gyrocompasses, such as the fibre optic gyrocompass are widely used to provide a
heading for navigation on ships.This is because they have two significant advantages over
magnetic compasses:
they find true north as determined by the axis of the Earth's rotation, which is different
from, and navigationally more useful than, magnetic north, and
they have a greater degree of accuracy because they are unaffected by ferromagnetic
materials, such as in a ship's steel hull, which distort the magnetic field.Aircraft commonly
use gyroscopic instruments (but not a gyrocompass) for navigation and attitude
monitoring; for details, see flight instruments (specifically the heading indicator) and
gyroscopic autopilot.== History ==
The first, not yet practical, form of gyrocompass was patented in 1885 by Marinus Gerardus
van den Bos.A usable gyrocompass was invented in 1906 in Germany by Hermann
Anschütz-Kaempfe, and after successful tests in 1908 became widely used in the German
Imperial Navy.Anschütz-Kaempfe founded the company Anschütz & Co. in Kiel, to mass
produce gyrocompasses; the company is today Raytheon Anschütz GmbH.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.In the United States,
Elmer Ambrose Sperry produced a workable gyrocompass system (1908: U.S. patent
1,242,065), and founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company.The unit was adopted by the U.S.
Navy (1911), 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.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 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.==
Operation ==
A gyroscope, not to be confused with a gyrocompass, is a spinning wheel mounted on a set
of gimbals so that its axis is free to orient itself in any way.When it is spun up to speed with
its axis pointing in some direction, due to the law of conservation of angular momentum,
such a wheel will normally maintain its original orientation to a fixed point in outer space
(not to a fixed point on Earth).Since the Earth rotates, it appears to a stationary observer on
Earth that a gyroscope's axis is completing a full rotation once every 24 hours.Such a
rotating gyroscope is used for navigation in some cases, for example on aircraft, where it is
known as heading indicator or directional gyro, but cannot ordinarily be used for long-term
marine navigation.The crucial additional ingredient needed to turn a gyroscope into a
gyrocompass, so it would automatically position to true north, is some mechanism that
results in an application of torque whenever the compass's axis is not pointing north.One
method uses friction to apply the needed torque: the gyroscope in a gyrocompass is not
completely free to reorient itself; if for instance a device connected to the axis is immersed
in a viscous fluid, then that fluid will resist reorientation of the axis.This friction force
caused by the fluid results in a torque acting on the axis, causing the axis to turn in a
direction orthogonal to the torque (that is, to precess) along a line of longitude.Once the axis
points toward the celestial pole, it will appear to be stationary and won't experience any
more frictional forces.This is because true north (or true south) is the only direction for
which the gyroscope can remain on the surface of the earth and not be required to
change.This axis orientation is considered to be a point of minimum potential energy.
