VIII 



THE GYROSCOPE AND OCEAN TRAVEL 



IT must not be supposed that Mr. Louis Brennan's 

 remarkable monorail car afiFords the first illus- 

 tration of an attempt to make practical use of 

 the principles of gyroscopic action. The fact is quite 

 otherwise. The idea of giving steadiness to such in- 

 struments as telescopes and compasses on shipboard 

 with the aid of gyroscopes originated half a century ago, 

 and was put into fairly successful operation by Professor 

 Piazzi Smyth (in 1856). More than a century earlier 

 than that (in 1744), an effort was made to aid the navi- 

 gator, by the use of a spinning-top with a polished upper 

 surface, to give an artificial horizon at sea, that observa- 

 tions might be made when the actual horizon was hidden 

 by clouds or fog. The inventor himself, Serson by 

 name, was sent out by the British Admiralty to test the 

 apparatus, and was lost in the wreck of the ship Victory. 

 His top seemed not to have commended itself to his 

 compatriots, but it has been in use more or less ever 

 since, particularly among French navigators. 



BESSEMER^S COSTLY EXPERIMENT 



These first attempts to use the gyroscope at sea were 

 of a technical character, and could have no great popular 



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