History of technology,

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sailingspider

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Hello,
I am hoping to pick your brains about technology. I'm doing a Univeisty assignment and part of it is looking at the technological changes in the recreational marine industry.

Does anybody know, roughly, when auto pilots first started to be used/available?

Thanks alot,

Alasdair
 
Nautech / Raymarine

The company was originally founded as Nautech Limited in 1974, by Derek Fawcett, a mechanical engineer and keen sailor, with the aim of producing a low-cost autopilot for leisure marine market. Initially a single product was produced under the Autohelm trademark, and its early success led to further development of an ever-broadening range of products
 
Pond yachts used to be fitted with mechanical self steering gear years and years ago. Not sure when the golden days of pond yacht racing were, but it was before my time. I have an idea that self steering for models pre-dated that for the real thing, which I suppose is logical.
 
Windvane steering gear on yachts as opposed to models is a late 50's early 60's thing... and model yachts had a quadrant on the ruudder that the mainsheet attached to before vanes....
 
As a schoolboy I was interested in model yachts. Wind vane self steering gear was certainly in use on them (and pretty much a standard item) by the very early 60's and was probably around earlier than that.
 
Blondie Hasler is probably the first person to successfully develop a wind vane autopilot - lots of good info about him and his windvanes (oh, and Jester too!) at http://www.jesterinfo.org/haslerselfsteering.html
He was a truly amazing man.

Apart from the humble origins (as mentioned above in an earlier post) of the Raymarine Autohelm that we know today, another early mechanical (also a bit electrical) autopilot was the Tillermaster developed by John Hutchinson in California in the '70's I think. If you do a Google you should bring up a few interesting / relevant websites.
www.tillermaster.com has an email address you can write to for info, but not much else.

And the folk at Benmar claim that their autopilots have been around for more than 40 years - http://www.benmarmarine.com/Autopilots.htm
 
We had a Pinta Autopilot fitted to a 50 foot Trawler back in 1965, and a damn good Pilot .The firm was a family run affair and were based in Brighton.
 
Large vessels autopilots started off with the 'gyrocompass' quite a long time ago (19th C?).
Look up Elmer Sperry for this - he was a good inventor but sadly had no financial moral scruples whatsoever. Interesting chap though....

Small vessels ( and I assume this is where your interest lies ) seem to have had to wait for the invention of the 'fluxgate compass' before autopilots were available.

Ch. 1 of Peter Forthmanns book gives a brief history of windvanes.

If you Google the 2 types of compass and also 'Sperry' you will find articles and links in Wickipedia et al.

I used a Pinta and a Robertson on Mobos back in the 60s - they were, for their time, quite amazing , to me, and worked well, however they used large amounts of electricity. This not being available on sailing yachts we had to wait for transistors and silicon chippery before we got our freedom from the helm.

Good luck and as Temptress says above we would be interested in your results.
 
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