Maximilian Joseph Johannes Eduard Schuler (5 February 1882 in

Zweibrücken Zweibrücken (; french: Deux-Ponts, ; Palatinate German: ''Zweebrigge'', ; literally translated as "Two Bridges") is a town in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Schwarzbach river. Name The name ''Zweibrücken'' means 'two bridges'; olde ...

– 30 July 1972) was a German

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

and is best known for discovering the principle known as

Schuler tuning Schuler tuning is a design principle for inertial navigation systems that accounts for the curvature of the Earth. An inertial navigation system, used in submarines, ships, aircraft, and other vehicles to keep track of position, determines directi ...

which is fundamental to the operation of a

gyrocompass A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and the rotation of the Earth (or another planetary body if used elsewhere in the universe) to find geographical direction automatically. The use of a gyroc ...

inertial guidance system An inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors (accelerometers), rotation sensors ( gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning the position, the orientation, and the velocity (dire ...

that will be operated near the surface of the earth. Schuler's cousin

Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe Hermann Franz Joseph Hubertus Maria Anschütz-Kaempfe (3 October 1872 – 6 May 1931) was a German art historian and inventor. He was born in Zweibrücken and died in Munich. In his quest to navigate to the North Pole by submarine, he becam ...

founded a firm near

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the J ...

, Germany, to manufacture navigational devices using

gyroscope A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rota ...

s in 1905, and Schuler joined the firm in 1906. For many years they struggled with the problem of maintaining a vertical reference as a craft moved around on the surface of the earth. In 1923 Schuler published his discovery that if the gyrocompass was tuned to have an 84.4 minute period of oscillation (the ''Schuler period'') then it would resist errors due to sideways acceleration of the ship or aircraft in which it was installed. Later, Schuler served as a professor of dynamics at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

. According to the

Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. By 31 December 2021, it contained information on 274,575 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a ty ...

he supervised one dissertation there, that of

Kurt Magnus Kurt Magnus (September 8, 1912 - December 12, 2003) was a German scientist, expert in the field of applied mechanics, a pioneer of mechatronics, modern navigation technology and inertial sensors.Ludwig Prandtl Ludwig Prandtl (4 February 1875 – 15 August 1953) was a German fluid dynamicist, physicist and aerospace scientist. He was a pioneer in the development of rigorous systematic mathematical analyses which he used for underlying the science of ...

References

1882 births 1972 deaths Engineers from Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Munich alumni People from Zweibrücken {{Germany-engineer-stub