Ernst Otto Schlick

Who was Ernst Otto Schlick?

Ernst Otto Schlick was a German naval engineer. He tried to solve the problem of rolling of ships at sea by installing large gyroscopes. The gyroscopic "stabilizers" gave disappointing or dangerous results in practice. An Englishman before him in 1868, Henry Bessemer had tried to use hydraulics and a spirit level watched by the steersman to stabilize ship rolls, also with dangerous results.

The gyroscopic stabilizer idea was later developed further by the US American inventor Elmer Ambrose Sperry but this system could hold the ship at an extreme angle for prolonged periods. By the time these stabilizers were abandoned, gyroscopes had already found their place in ship navigation as gyrocompasses and in control systems.