COALING WARSHIPS FROM COLLIERS IN HARBOR. 141 



Mr. Elmer A. SpERRY, Member: — Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I will first 

 read my paper and then have the stereopticon views. This subject of the applica- 

 tion of the gyroscope to marine purposes has been a subject that has interested me 

 for many years. Last year while abroad I made it a point to see every one who 

 could be found conveniently who had Avritten on the subject of the gyroscope or 

 who had touched upon its application in any way ; and I assure you I met a very 

 interesting group of men, the master of which is our good friend Dr. Schhck, and 

 although our rules would not allow me to publish his portrait, which was taken at 

 the instance of Sir WilHam H. White while Dr. Schlick was with him in London, 

 still I have a slide in which we will see his genial face before we are through. I 

 found quite a number of people in Germany who were interested in the gyroscope, 

 but usually in a very theoretical way. Few seemed to have much idea of its 

 practicable appreciation outside of Dr. Schlick, and possibly Brennan in England, 

 and one or two others. 



I might say one word on how Dr. Schlick happened to approach this subject. 

 He had for a number of years noticed a peculiar action of side-wheel steamers. As 

 a side-wheel steamer rolls, her prow swings round in the direction in which the roll 

 takes place. He thought about this phenomenon a great deal and what utilization 

 could be made of it, and it led to his v/ork of instaUing his first gyroscope upon the 

 sea bar, which we will see in the views. When he read his paper before the Insti- 

 tution of Naval Architects, more than one Englishman jumped up and said there 

 was nothing peculiar in what the Doctor had seen, that the prow of a side wheel 

 and every other ship swung round as her roll took place. The testimony was so 

 strong against Dr. Schlick 's observation that he could only get up and say : — " Well, 

 I saw it;" and he did see it. The motion he observed was absolutely opposite to 

 the motion referred to by his critics and known as yawing. When a ship yaws, it 

 goes in an opposite direction, but when a side-wheeler has this gyroscopic motion it 

 goes off in the same direction as the roll. 



