THE GYROSCOPE FOR MARINE PURPOSES. 145 



and the men trod the deck. He saw they changed its relative position 

 upon the boat considerably, so he stepped back and took a sight as to its 

 alignment with the target and to his great surprise he found the target was 

 still in the same quarter. In their efforts they had moved the ship around 

 under the torpedo which contained the spinning wheel and which had refused 

 to move. Now this was one of the first times that the real power of the 

 gyroscope had manifested itself; it became noted in engineering circles. 



As to some of the other uses of the gyroscope. The most extensive 

 use to-day is probably the automatic steering gear in Whitehead torpedoes. 

 This gear is simply used for the purpose of lateral guiding of the torpedo 

 and holding same to a straight course. This little gyroscope has a secondary 

 ring which may precess — ^it offers positive resistance to any effort to turn 

 it from its course, and this resistance is used to operate valves and, through 

 a secondary motor, the rudders. This use originated with Obrey, an 

 Austrian naval officer (see Plate 45). 



Our own member Mr. Leavitt, engineer of the E. W. Bliss Co., of New York, 

 and inventor of the Bliss-Lea vitt torpedo, has greatly increased the efficiency 

 of the " gyro " gear of torpedoes, as he has greatly improved the torpedo itself. 

 Figuring from the increased speed and radius of action, he has increased 

 the power factor of the old Whitehead torpedo twenty times and without 

 materially increasing the air pressure carried. He has accomplished this 

 by a wonderfully bold piece of engineering; that is, by automatically burn- 

 ing a fuel directly in the pressure air current, thus greatly increasing its 

 temperature. The reciprocating engine of the Whitehead is replaced by 

 a pair of little Curtiss turbines. It should be remembered that every 

 doubling of the absolute temperature doubles the volume, and whereas he 

 starts out with a small amount of air, he reaches the turbine with an immense 

 quantity of air, under the requisite pressure, enormously increasing the 

 power generated, an exceptionally interesting piece of engineering! 



Figures 2 and 3, Plate 46, show two types of the Lea vitt directing gyros- 

 cope; this is small and he has increased its accuracy by unloading the base 

 ring; instead of asking the base ring to do the work of moving a valve, he 

 cuts the duty required down to about one-hundredth of that required in the 

 Obrey gear and makes it give a simple directive factor to an extremely 

 small pivoted pawl at the instant the pawl is otherwise perfectly idle. 

 Plate 47 shows this vibrating pawl at E. 



Dr. Schlick, a noted engineer of Hamburg, Germany, has done 

 much in connection with the gyroscope. It is to Dr. Schlick 's genius 

 that we largely owe the vibrationless reciprocating marine engine. This 

 engineer has gone further in the installation of large gyroscopes for steady- 



