1955 - Tigran Shmaonov[?] finds excess microwave emission with a temperature of roughly 3 K
1964 - A. G. Doroshkevich[?] and Igor Novikov[?] write an unnoticed paper suggesting microwave searches for the blackbody radiation predicted by Gamow, Alpher, and Herman
1968 - Martin Rees[?] and Dennis Sciama[?] theoretically predict microwave background fluctuation amplitudes created by photons traversing time-dependent potential wells
... "rolling" point, but the gyro will also be accelerated to a smaller extent by the slipping friction.
The device is covered by US patents 3,726,146 (1973) and ...