The history of Raytheon Anschütz has strongly influenced the navigation on board of ships. It all started with the gyro compass.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the young Dr. Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe, who studied history of arts, joined scientific expeditions to Svalbard. He got involved in navigation and observed a classic problem of high-seas navigation: reliable course-keeping, especially near the poles, where the magnetic compass does not work properly.

Anschütz was obsessed with finding a suitable course-keeping instrument and concentrated on locating the geographical north direction with the help of a gyro. In 1904, he was able to test the first “gyro course keeper” on the Kiel fjord, which led to the first patents.

Anschütz was fascinated by the technology, and driven by his ambition to solve the encountered problems. Anschütz had the opportunity given by the German Navy to test his invention on board the ship “Undine” in the Kiel fjord, where he had perfect test conditions. He observed that the new apparatus was quite stable against any vibrations, but that it was dramatically influenced by the waves on the outer Kiel fjord! He concluded that the basic principle was good, but he was sure that further improvements had to be integrated to stabilize the system for usage on seagoing vessels.

Anschütz was no scientist but a practical thinking man - and he continued optimizing his gyro compass until it was suited to withstand the rough conditions at sea. In 1908 the company presented the first gyro compass that could be used on board a ship, and a later idea in 1911 was to combine three gyros for more stability. Already in 1905, the company Anschütz & Co. GmbH was founded and started the production of gyro compasses in Kiel, Germany. Few years later, commercial shipping was keen to get gyro compasses as well. The first commercial ship equipped with an Anschütz gyro compass was the passenger ship “Imperator” of HAPAG Line in the year 1913.

The Imperator, with a size of 52,000 tons, was the biggest ship in those days. Further innovations followed the gyro compass, for example, the world’s first chart plotter, a great grandfather of the present generation of electronic sea chart systems. And another innovation of Anschütz has made a deep impact on navigating: the first autopilot for ships, the so-called “iron helmsman”. Since 1995 the company has been part of Raytheon Technologies Corporation (formerly Raytheon Company). Raytheon Technologies is an aerospace and defense company that provides advanced systems and services for commercial, military and government customers worldwide.