will doubtless come into more general use. An account by Sir William White has been published in Engineering. Vol. LXXXIII, p. 448.
In order to ensure the mean position of the gyroscope being that shown, i.e., axis vertical, its mass centre is arranged slightly below the gimbal centres.[1]
It has been suggested by some that the force necessary to hold a vessel steady in a sea-way must be such as to cause an undue strain on the vessel, but such is by no means necessarily the case. Where no gyroscope is fitted and the rolling of the vessel is largely due to synchrony, the stresses and strains may sometimes be very much greater than would be the case were the vessel prevented from rolling altogether by brute force, whether supplied in the form of a gyroscope or otherwise. Of course, under all conditions the gyroscope should be fitted in the immediate neighbourhood of a transverse bulkhead, and where a vessel is of great size it would be obviously expedient to employ more than one gyroscope distributed along the length of the vessel in approximate proportion to the displacement.
- ↑ The above exposition, although fundamental and sufficient for the present purpose, is not altogether complete; complications arise under certain circumstances, as for example when the gyroscope is set in motion in a vessel already rolling. (Reference should be made, for more complete detail, to the article by Sir William White already cited.)
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