Slight history to Smith auto pilot system
The Smith Automatic Pilot was one of the most widely used first auto pilot systems, especially in the Royal Air Force - RAF, during WWII. "The used of this system enables an aircraft to be flown in almost any weather condition, thus relieving the human pilot an immense amount of physical and mental strain." The guiding principle of the auto pilot system is an air-driven gyroscope. This system was manufactured by the Messrs. Kelvin, Bottomley & Baird Limited, many of the instruments used, designated the K.B.B.-Kollsman type, were designed by the American genius inventor Paul Kollsman and his Kollsman Instrument Company.
The system was not just a gadget or just a night or 'blind-flying' instrument, but was a mechanism of the highest reliability and precision, and was "used exclusively throughout the RAF for eight years" by the year 1941. The unique and reliability of the Smith automatic pilot enable it to withstand the "most arduous conditions" encounter in the RAF. Mark III and Type II were available in 1940.
Ernest M. H Appleby, an Instrument Maker, wrote : "I had the privilege of briefly assisting Paul Kollsman when he spent some time in England at the (K.B.B.-Kollsman) Basingstoke plant, which was running up to full production in 1938-39, 24 hours a day, in preparation for the coming war. ..... Paul Kollsman was, to my mind, the most outstanding aeronautical instrument designer of the 1930’s.
"An example of his design genius was the British-produced MK X1V 3-pointer altimeter, which, in one giant step, took aviation instrumentation from the fusée chain barometer / altimeter to a precision instrument. The Kollsman designed altimeter also incorporated a unique temperature compensation system which has never been bettered... It corrected the temperature change effect on the aneroid capsule sensor with changes in altitude, a non-linear function; the design was brilliant in its simplicity. These instruments equipped a great proportion of the Trainers, Fighters(Rate of climb indicator Mk.3P as used in Vampire, Hunter etc. Mk.XIV altimeter as fitted to late Spitfires, Meteor, Vampire etc), Bombers, Reconnaissance, Meteorological and Transport aircraft of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, the Army Air Corp. and the Air Forces of the Commonwealth of Nations."
Kollsman went on to be a premier inventor with fundamental discoveries in jet engine technology; medical syringes; water purification and desalination methods; and ground breaking inventions for Electrode-deionization and electrodialysis. Perhaps one of the most unknown top 20th Century Inventors with over 200 useful patents.
Take a look at this recent patent: US patent 8051655, and who do they cite as the key inventor?...the first 13 fundamental jet engine patents citations refer to one man - Paul Kollsman! (US patent 8051655 - a modern "method and system for mechanical and electrical power generation".) Kollsman was known as the shy brilliant genius.