Altimeter. History of invention and production

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Altimeter. History of invention and production

The history of technology, technology, objects around us

Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us

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Altimeter (or altimeter from Latin altus high) is a flight and navigation device that indicates the flight altitude. According to the principle of the device, altimeters are divided into barometric and radio engineering (otherwise radio altimeter).

Altimeter
Altimer

Despite the rapid development of aviation, which began in 1903 with the historic flight of the Wright brothers, by the 1920s the ideology of flight had changed little. The main instruments of the pilot were still the eyes and the vestibular apparatus, so flying in darkness, fog or low clouds was fraught with great risk. As soon as the pilot stopped seeing the earth or the sun, he lost his orientation in space, which inevitably led to a stall in a tailspin.

However, airplanes flew at night too - guided by illuminated objects on the ground. Experiments on pigeons being released from an airplane with their eyes covered with paper have confirmed that "blind flight" with the help of the senses alone is hardly possible. Reliable instruments were required.

By that time, many devices for orientation in space already existed. First, it was a turn and roll indicator, which was a curved glass tube with a metal ball inside. Secondly, the gyrocompass and gyrohorizon, developed by Elmer Sperry, Jr., son of the founder of Sperry. The only thing missing was a reliable altimeter.

The missing link was provided by a young native of Germany, Paul Kollsman. Born in 1900 in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1923, where he worked for five years as a mechanic for the Pioneer Instrument Co., a division of the Bendix aircraft instrument company. In 1928, Kollsman retired and founded the Kollsman Instrument Co. with a capital of $500.

The action of the barometric altimeters (altimeters) that existed at that time was based on the change in atmospheric pressure with height. The principle itself was quite good, but the accuracy of the instruments was 30 × 50 m, and this was in no way suitable for "blind flight". While working at Pioneer Instrument, Kollsman dismantled many such devices and repeatedly drew attention to the imperfection of the mechanism that set the height indicator needle in motion: the accuracy of the gears left much to be desired.

Kollsman took as a model the most perfect mechanical device known at that time - the Swiss chronometer. By his order, one of the Swiss watch companies made a mechanism that allowed measuring height with an accuracy of 1 m. And on September 24, 1929, the first truly "blind" flight took place: an aircraft under the control of Lieutenant James Doolittle (the same one that in 1942 led the famous US Air Force raid on Tokyo, and then rose to the rank of general and commanded the 18th Air Force in Europe) took off and made a 15-mile flight around the route. The cockpit was curtained, and the pilot was guided exclusively by instruments, one of which was a Kollsman barometric altimeter.

Kollsman still makes great avionics today. And the phrases Kollsman window (a window for setting pressure at the airfield level) and Kollsman number (this pressure itself) have long become common nouns among English-speaking pilots.

Author: S.Apresov

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