Published Resources Details
Book Section
- Title
- Gatty, Harold Charles (1903-1957), air navigator, naturalist, adventurer and writer
- In
- Australian dictionary of biography, volume 8: 1891 - 1939 Cl-Gib
- Imprint
- Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1981, pp. 630-631
- Url
- http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A080646b.htm
- Format
- Description
Published online in 2006.
- Abstract
Quote: "In October 1927 Gatty took his family to California where for a short time he was chief mate on a schooner, the Goodwill, owned by sporting-goods millionaire, Keith Spalding. Next year, keenly aware of the limitations of existing methods and instruments for aerial navigation, he opened a laboratory repairing navigation instruments, including aircraft compasses, and making air-route maps for the Pioneer Instrument Co. in Los Angeles; this developed into a small navigation school. His work attracted the attention of P. V. H. Weems, inventor of a system of air navigation. To work in conjunction with the 'Weems curves', Gatty devised his ground-speed and drift indicator. This instrument formed the basis of the automatic pilot which later came to be standard equipment on most aircraft."