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1949 Gyroscope Spins Up Again

1949 Gyroscope Spins Up Again

[Curious Marc] has an Apollo-era gyroscope but isn’t quite ready to put it through this paces without some practice. So he borrowed a 1949 vintage Sperry C5 gyro and did some experiments with it using a 3-phase power supply he plans to use on the other gyro.

1949 Gyroscope Spins Up Again

There is a little bit of troubleshooting and a lot of gorgeous close up shots of these electromechanical marvels. They sure are noisy, though.

[Marc] wanted a gyro testing table that can control the orientation of a gyro under test. He went the auction route to get a pretty expensive piece of gear for a relatively low price but without the expensive software. In a stroke of luck, he managed to score the required software from the vendor who was intrigued by his project. It looked to us like a table like this wouldn’t be that hard to build from scratch, either.

We are interested in what [Marc] will do with his gyros next. It is hard to imagine that gyros have come from this sort of device to a tiny IC inertial measurement unit that can fit in a phone. Imagine packing the Sperry unit on your next walking robot or self-balancing unicycle.

Need a refresher on how gyro’s work? We got that, too. It even covers the modern kind.