Hans Conser wrote:

I didn't realize that sierra flight systems used a laser gyro.  They really have come down in price.  My uncle Bob Warwood was very involved in the first laser gyro.  He told me that the bigwigs at Honeywell at the time didn't think that it was going to work.  He also shared the patent for the radar altimeter.

Just some trivia.

Hans

As I recall the early ones used prisms and they had to go down to bed rock at the factory
to secure the precision grinding  machines. The cost was $100,000 a shot and the
Russians would pay $1,000,000 to get their hands on one. 
The big cost breakthrough was when somebody discovered
that fiber optics rolled up on a spool worked almost as well.

Paul Lamar
 
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