Carl Lukas Norden was born on April 23, 1880 in Semarang, Java, Indonesia. He was the son of Edward Norden, a prosperous merchant, and Cornelia Gersen. When Norden was five, his father died, and his mother returned with the family to the Netherlands.
Norden received his primary education at Nijmegen and Apeldoorn, and from 1893 to 1896 attended the Royal Art Academy at Dresden, Germany. Since his family had already undertaken the support of his older brother's art career, Norden decided that his pursuit of a similar path would be a financial burden. Therefore, in 1897 he apprenticed himself to an instrument maker in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1900 he entered the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and graduated four years later with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Recognizing America's congenial climate for engineers and inventors, Norden emigrated in 1904, shortly after his graduation.
Norden worked at first for two Brooklyn manufacturers, H. R. Worthington Pump and Machine Works, and J. H. Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company, a producer of mine hoists. It was at the latter firm that Norden probably met Lidgerwood subcontractor Elmer Sperry, an established inventor and engineer. In 1911, Sperry offered Norden a job on the research and development staff of Sperry Gyroscope Company. Norden and Sperry maintained a productive, if somewhat stormy, professional relationship for four years--Norden was twenty years Sperry's junior and was partial to smoking what Sperry labeled "those vile black cigars. " Norden resigned several times from Sperry Gyroscope, only to return the following morning to his work on gyrostabilizers as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. While associated with Sperry, his research helped to bring the gyroscope from an embryonic stage of development to a reliability sufficient for naval use. Norden considered Sperry's offer of a $25-a-week raise in recognition of this effort to be an insult. He resigned permanently in 1915 and set up his own company. Nevertheless, he continued to work as a paid consultant with Sperry on naval gyrostabilizer assignments until 1917, despite continuous disagreement with Sperry over who should have patent rights to the stabilizer.
From 1918 through the end of World War II, Norden worked closely with the U. S. Navy. Initially he concentrated on designing a stable gun platform and a radio-controlled aircraft to serve as a prototype for a flying bomb. The aircraft was to be launched by catapult. It would shed its wings during flight and be transformed into a guided missile with Norden-designed radio controls. Although this device ultimately reached the practical stage, the military never used it in combat because officials considered it an inhuman and undiscriminating weapon against civilian populations. Its controls, though, served as the forerunner of an automatic pilot mechanism that became an integral part of the Norden bombsight used during World War II.
After World War I, the Naval Bureau of Ordnance asked Norden to design a device for dropping bombs from aircraft onto moving ships. Norden started work on it in 1921. Two years later, he took on a partner, Theodore H. Barth, a former army colonel trained in chemical warfare techniques. Together Norden and Barth formed Carl L. Norden, Inc. in 1928, with Barth as president and Norden as consultant. The assistant research chief of the Naval Bureau of Ordnance, Captain Frederick I. Entwhistle, joined Norden and Barth shortly after the company's establishment. All three men participated in the bombsight design and shared patent rights. While Norden worked at a drawing board--often in Zurich--Barth assembled most of the models in his New York City apartment. Carl L. Norden, Inc. , produced its first bombsight in 1927. The first models were not particularly accurate, but by 1931 the Mark XV had been developed. It would remain essentially unchanged throughout World War II.
Unlike the Manhattan Project, which was kept secret even from most government and military officials, the bombsight's existence was known to most Americans, although until 1944 practically no one outside the military had even seen a picture of the device and its design remained a closely guarded secret. The plant that produced bombsights required 350 guards at all times. Two personal bodyguards accompanied Norden constantly, and bombardiers who operated the ninety-pound instrument took an oath to destroy it if they were captured. The bombsight could place a bomb inside a 100-foot circle from an altitude of two miles. Bombardiers boasted that they could hit a pickle barrel from 10, 000 feet. The sight combined an optical device, a gyroscope, and a computer. It required the bombardier to make only three manual adjustments--for the bomb's weight, and the plane's altitude and speed--after which he would line up the target through the sight. The autopilot kept the plane on course and the bombs released automatically. Earlier Norden designs of the gyrostabilizer corrected for the plane's drift, maintained altitude once set, and adjusted for aircraft control and speed changes. Norden had developed his bombsight for the navy but, ironically, that military branch never used it. Naval bombing occurred at low altitudes and the Norden bombsight was impractical below 1, 800 feet. The Army Air Corps, though, used the device extensively in raids over Germany and in the atomic attacks against Japan. Its reliability allowed daytime precision bombing missions, considered a more humane form of military activity than the nighttime saturation bombing practiced by British and German forces. Nicknamed "the football" by European Theater bombardiers and "the blue ox" (from the Paul Bunyan legend) by Pacific Theater bombardiers, the 2, 000-part bombsights cost $10, 000 each during the war. By the mid-1960's they were selling for about $25 at surplus stores.
Norden designed numerous other military devices.
After World War II Carl L. Norden, Inc. , became Norden Laboratories Corporation, a research and development firm. In 1951 the company established Norden Instruments, Inc. , as a production subsidiary. Norden and Barth became less active in company affairs, Norden retiring to Switzerland and Barth to Cape Cod, Massachussets (In 1955 Norden Laboratories merged with Ketay Instrument Company; three years later this company was acquired by United Aircraft and renamed the Norden Division. )
Norden considered himself a designer rather than an inventor.
Believing that one did not have the right to change the citizenship to which one was born, he remained a Dutch citizen and an active member of the Netherlands Club of New York City.
The Norden bombsight has been called one of the two major secret weapons of the American effort in World War II. He developed catapults and arresting gears for the World War II aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga, the first hydraulically controlled aircraft landing gears, and a device that linked his bombsight with an automatic pilot, leaving crew members free to watch for enemy fighters while over target areas. In November 1944 Norden accepted the Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, given in recognition of "great and unique engineering genius. "
Despite his significant public role Norden eschewed public appearances.
On April 11, 1907 Norden married Else Fehring, daughter of a well-to-do German businessman. They had two children.
