THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



won the contest. To maintain its victory it must con- 

 tinue its backward and forward plunging; but from side 

 to side its axis will not swerve. 



DID GYROSCOPIC ACTION WRECK THE VIPER? 



It was the failure to understand that a gyroscope- 

 wheel, to work effectively, must be given opportunity to 

 oscillate in this secondary fashion that led Sir Henry 

 Bessemer to spend an enormous sum in a vain effort to 

 accomplish on a small scale what Dr. Schlick's gyroscope 

 accomplishes for the entire ship. Now it is clearly 

 understood that a marine gyroscope on an absolutely 

 fixed shaft cannot exercise its full action ; but there is 

 still a good deal of difference of opinion among engineers 

 as to just how much a spinning body must be permitted 

 to oscillate in order to make its gyroscopic effects notice- 

 able. The discussion that has taken place over the loss 

 of the torpedo-boat Viper furnishes a case in point. 



Some critics contend that the loss of the boat was due 

 to the gyroscopic action of its turbine engines. They 

 believed that the turbine at the stem of the little ship 

 held that portion of the craft in a rigid plane, while the 

 anterior portion of the ship, caught in the trough of a 

 wave, broke away. That the ship broke in two is 

 certain; but competent engineers have denied that 

 gyroscopic turbines could have had any share in its 

 destruction. According to their view, the turbines of a 

 ship are powerless to exert the gyroscopic action in 

 question, because their axes are fixed and they thus have 

 not the opportunity for secondary oscillation to which I 



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