Professor Arnold T. Nordsieck

In the 1950s, he built a "differential analyzer"?an analog computer capable of solving complex equations and drawing curves?out of $700-worth of war surplus materials. Clones subsequently became the first computers at the California Radiation Laboratory (later Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and at Purdue University. Standard Precision Navigator/Gimbaled Electrostatic gyro Aircraft Navigation Systems (SPN/GEANS) grew out of work he did in the 1950s on a novel gyroscope design, the Electrostatically Suspended Gyroscope (ESG). In the ESG, the rotating mass is a spherical ball supported in a vacuum by an electrostatic field. The corporation that took up his work most actively was Honeywell of Minneapolis. Professional Instruments Company lapped super-precise spherical rotors for Honeywell?s ESG. With these highly-favored gyros, the Navy?s nuclear-powered submarines could remain submerged for 30 days at a time, without requiring a star-based recalibration.