It was originally formed as Anschütz & Company in 1905 in Kiel, Germany, in order to produce the first gyrocompass for large ships, which entered service in 1907.

This attempt failed for a variety of reasons, one being that the magnetic compass became increasingly inaccurate as one approached the polar regions, especially when used from a steel ship.

[3] Similar concepts had been developed by Marinus Gerardus van den Bos and Barend Janse in 1885, but not used commercially.

[5] It was tested on the battleship SMS Deutschland in March 1908, which demonstrated its tendency to tumble in high sea states.

This led to the introduction of a three-gyro system to address this problem, while the existing two-gyro version was accepted for service in the meantime.

On 5 January 1915, Albert Einstein was paid 1,000 Marks to appear before the court and answer a series of technical questions, followed by a written report filed 6 February.

[8] At a follow-up meeting on 26 March, Anschütz asked Einstein to personally inspect the Sperry device, which was carried out on 10 July and resulted in a second report 7 August.

In 1925 they began work on a gyrocompass system, in partnership with Albert Einstein, which used two spheres instead of traditional gyroscopes and gimbals.

The company has subsidiaries in Panama City, Portsmouth (United Kingdom), Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Singapore.