SUBDUING THE WAVES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2072, 6 May 1907, Page 1

SUBDUING THE WAVES.

THE SCHIjIOIC GYROSCOPE. The pronouncement of such nil authority as Sir William White, formerly chict constructor to the Admiralty, that Otto Sclilic'k’s gyroscopic apparatus absolutely prevents the rolling motion of ships, commands for Schlick’s invention the attention of the whole civilised world. In a very modest but unavoidably technical article in a German paper (translated and published in The Scientific American), Mr Otto Schlick, the inventor, describes the gyrostat. Tho idea was suggested to him by certain curious phenomena which ho had observed in paddle-wheel steamers. Olio of these is the violent list caused by putting the helm about, which is much greater than can be explained by the centrifugal force due to the turning. In its essentials the gyrostat seems to consist of a horizontal wheel revolving at high peed at a point low down in the hotly of the ship. Says Mr. Schlick:—“My gyrostat is a heavy wheel revolving rapidly about a vertical shaft mounted in a frame supported on trunnions which allow if to turn about a horizontal transverse axis so that tho shaft of the wheel swings in the vessel’s plane of symmetry. As the common centre of

gravity of the wheel, shaft, and frame is lower than the trunnions, the shaft hangs vertical while tho vessel is at rest, hut it swings fore and aft like ii pendulum when the vessel rolls.

’he arrangement above described, ovever, would only lengthen the cried of rolling, because part of the

energy derived from the waves wouldbe consumed in raising the centre of gravity of tho apparatus as the shaft is deflected from tho vertical position. . . The addition of a hydraulic brake makes it possible to check the oscillitions of tho apparatus, and indirectly through reaction, those of the ship. In other words, the energy taken from the rolling motion during one phase is not restored to it during another, but is converted into heat by the brake, so that the energy of rolling is diminished.”