Draper, Charles Stark

(born Oct. 2, 1901, Windsor, Mo., U.S.—died July 25, 1987, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. aeronautical engineer. He taught at MIT from 1935, where he developed a gunsight for naval anti-aircraft guns that was installed on most U.S. naval vessels in World War II. His inertial guidance system, called spatial inertial reference equipment (SPIRE), allowed planes, submarines, and ballistic missiles to travel thousands of miles to their destinations without reference to outside navigational aids, such as radio or the positions of celestial bodies. His group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also developed guidance systems for the Apollo program. He is memorialized in the annual Charles Stark Draper Prize for achievement in engineering.

Draper, Charles Stark (1901–87) engineer, inventor; born in Windsor, Mo. A generalist with degrees from Stanford, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he became head of MIT's instrumentation laboratory in 1939. There he developed gyroscopes for weapons systems and, eventually, guidance systems for missiles and spacecraft, including the Apollo moon project.