Gyroscope

The earliest known gyroscope-like instrument was made by German Johann Bohnenberger, who first wrote about it in 1817. At first he called it the "Machine".[3][4] Bohnenberger's machine was based on a rotating massive sphere.[5] In 1832, American Walter R. Johnson developed a similar device that was based on a rotating disk.[6][7] The French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, working at the École Polytechnique in Paris, recommended the machine for use as a teaching aid, and thus it came to the attention of Léon Foucault.[8] In 1852, Foucault used it in an experiment involving the rotation of the Earth.[9][10] It was Foucault who gave the device its modern name, in an experiment to see (Greek skopeein, to see) the Earth's rotation (Greek gyros, circle or rotation),[11] which was visible in the 8 to 10 minutes before friction slowed the spinning rotor.
During World War II, the gyroscope became the prime component for aircraft and anti-aircraft gun sights.
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum.[1] In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation. Although this orientation does not remain fixed, it changes in response to an external torque much less and in a different direction than it would without the large angular momentum associated with the disk's high rate of spin and moment of inertia. Since external torque is minimized by mounting the device in gimbals, its orientation remains nearly fixed, regardless of any motion of the platform on which it is mounted.

Within mechanical systems or devices, a conventional gyroscope is a mechanism comprising a rotor journaled to spin about one axis, the journals of the rotor being mounted in an inner gimbal or ring; the inner gimbal is journaled for oscillation in an outer gimbal for a total of two gimbals.
The outer gimbal or ring, which is the gyroscope frame, is mounted so as to pivot about...