BESSEMER'S COSTLY EXPERIMENT
These first attempts to use the gyroscope at sea were of a technical character, and could have no great popular interest. But about twenty-five years ago an attempt was made to utilize the principle of the spinning-top in a way that would directly concern the personal comfort of a large number of voyagers. It was nothing less than the effort to give stability to a room on a steamship, in order that the fortunate occupant might avoid the evils of seasickness. The man who stood sponsor for the idea, and who expended sums variously estimated at from fifty thousand to more than a million dollars in the futile attempt to carry it into execution, was the famous Sir Henry Bessemer, famed for his revolutionary innovations in the steel industry. It would appear that Bessemer's first intention was to make a movable room to be balanced by mechanisms worked by hand. But after his project was under way his attention was called to the possibility of utilizing gyroscopic forces to the same end. As the story goes, he chanced to purchase a top for sixpence, and that small beginning led him ultimately to expend more than a million dollars in playing with larger tops. His expensive toy passed into history as the "Bessemer chamber." It was actually constructed on a Channel steamer; but the would-be inventor, practical engineer though he was, did not find a way properly to apply the principle, and his experiment ended in utter failure.
With this, the idea that the gyroscope-wheel could ever aid in steadying a ship at sea seemed to be proved a mere vagary unworthy the attention of engineers. But not all experimenters were disheartened, and since the day of Sir Henry Bessemer's fiasco a number of workers have given thought to the problem—with the object, however, of applying the powers of the revolving wheel not merely to a single room but to an entire ship. I have personal knowledge of at least one inventor, quite unknown to fame, who believed that he had solved the problem, but who died before he could put his invention to a practical test. It remained for a German engineer, Dr. Otto Schlick, to put before the world, first as a theory and then as a demonstration, the practical utility of the revolving wheel in preventing a ship from rolling.