7 Charles Stark Draper 7fluid and later with accelerometers, Draper developed
entirely self-contained inertial guidance systems. These
machines were so precise that they could compute a vehicle’s
exact position from its initial position and acceleration;
needing no further inputs, they were invulnerable to
enemy countermeasures. The first experimental systems
for aircraft, Projects FEBE and SPIRE, were tested in 1949
and 1953. Production systems were installed in aircraft and
submarines beginning in 1956 and in the Polaris missile
in 1960. The “black boxes” of spinning gyroscopes and
integrating circuits developed by Draper and his students
were eventually deployed in the Air Force’s Atlas, Titan,
and Minuteman missiles and the Navy’s Poseidon and
Trident missiles, placing them at the core of the U.S. thermo-
nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
Inertial guidance provided a solution to critical tech-
nical problems in Cold War nuclear strategy. Equally
important to its popularity and success was Draper’s train-
ing of civilian and military engineers, who learned his
methods, became disciples of self-contained navigation,
made his systems work in the field, and awarded the I-Lab
contracts. With the creation of the Weapons System
Engineering Course in 1952, Draper institutionalized one
mechanism for the development of a technological intel-
ligentsia within the armed services and made the lab a
centre for producing both guidance systems and the people
to use them. Graduates of the program were among inertial
guidance’s most enthusiastic supporters and sources for
Laboratory contracts, and they supervised the development
of the nation’s intercontinental and submarine-launched
ballistic systems that used inertial systems. It was a Draper
graduate, Robert Seamans, who gave the I-Lab the con-
tract for the development of the Apollo program guidance
system that successfully guided Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the Moon and back.