Sperry, Elmer Ambrose, 1860-1930

Elmer A. Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cortland, N.Y. He attended the local elementary schools and then enrolled in Cornell University. At Cornell he developed an interest in electrical engineering and began working with a group of Syracuse industrialists in order to construct an arc lighting system. By 1882 Sperry was recognized as being one of America's electrical pioneers. He is primarily known as for his work with feedback devices and servomechanisms and as the founder in 1910 of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. Sperry died on June 16, 1930.

Elmer A. Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cortland, N.Y. He attended the local elementary schools and then enrolled in Cornell University. At Cornell he developed an interest in electrical engineering and began working with a group of Syracuse industrialists in order to construct an arc lighting system. By 1882 Sperry was recognized as being one of America's electrical pioneers. He is best known for his work with feedback devices and servomechanisms and as the founder in 1910 of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. Sperry died on June 16, 1930.

Elmer A. Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cortland, N.Y. He attended the local elementary schools and then enrolled in Cornell University. At Cornell he developed an interest in electrical engineering and began working with a group of Syracuse industrialists in order to construct an arc lighting system. By 1882 Sperry was recognized as being one of America's electrical pioneers. He is best known for his work with feedback devices and servomechanisms, and as the founder in 1910 of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. Sperry died on June 16, 1930.

Elmer A. Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cortland, N.Y. He attended the local elementary schools and then enrolled in Cornell University. At Cornell, he developed an interest in electrical engineering and began working with a group of Syracuse industrialists in order to construct an arc lighting system. By 1882 Sperry was recognized as being one of America's electrical pioneers.

In 1883 Sperry moved to Chicago where he established the Electric Light, Motor, and Car Brake Company. He, however, found that he could notcompete with the more established Edision and Brush Electric companies so he began experimenting with electric coal-mining equipment. In l886 he founded the Sperry Electric Mining Machine Company. During these years Sperry also developed an electric street car. After selling his patents to General Electric, he went to work for the company as a consultant.

In 1901 Sperry became associated with a young patent examiner, Clifton Townsend, and the two men worked together to develop an electrolytic process to manufacture white lead. Sperry and Townsend opened a production plant in Niagara Falls, N.Y., which was sold to Elon Hooker's Development and Funding Company.

In 1907 Sperry began to experiment with the gyroscope. Three years later, he founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company in Brooklyn, N.Y., in order to develop, manufacture, and market marine gyrostabilizing devices. Working closely with the Navy, he developed the gyrocompass, ship stabilizer, and high-intensity search light. During the First World War, the Sperry Gyroscope Company became a major defense contractor, and Elmer Sperry sat on the Naval Consulting Board. After the war, Sperry Gyroscope moved into aeronautics as it developed airplane stabilizers, gyrostabilized bombsights, and the aerial torpedo. Elmer Sperry died on June l6, l930.

Elmer A. Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cortland, N.Y. He attended the local elementary schools and then enrolled in Cornell University. At Cornell he developed an interest in electrical engineering and began working with a group of Syracuse industrialists in order to construct an arc lighting system. By 1882 Sperry was recognized as being one of America's electrical pioneers. He founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company in 1910.

During the 1920s Elmer Sperry turned over the day-to-day operation of the Gyroscope Company to a cadre of professional managers and turned his attention to a technological problem that had first captured his attention as a young man: the compound diesel engine. Correspondence with Charles Kettering of General Motors shows that by 1919 Sperry sought to develop a diesel engine because he had concluded that the world was exhausting its oil supplies and more efficient ways to use energy had to be found. Also, he was convinced that flammable aviation fuel had to be replaced by a safer form of energy.

Elmer A. Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cortland, N.Y. He attended the local elementary schools and then enrolled in Cornell University. At Cornell, he developed an interest in electrical engineering and began working with a group of Syracuse industrialists in order to construct an arc lighting system. By 1882 Sperry was recognized as being one of America's electrical pioneers.

In 1901 Sperry read a journal article which described the electrolytic process used by a young Washington patent examiner, Clinton P. Townsend. The Townsend process liberated sodium hydroxide and hydrogen from a brine solution. Upon learning about it, Sperry immediately realized this reaction could potentially supply a new form of energy for industrial chemistry. He contracted Townsend and offered to finance his experimental work in exchange for rights to his patents. Together, Sperry and Townsend began working on the development of an electrolytic cell and made plans to set up a production facility to manufacture caustic soda and white lead.

For a while this operation was promising, and Sperry moved to Niagara Falls to open a production plant. In 1903 and 1904 a number of other companies expressed keen interest in Sperry's and Townsend's experimental work. The Solvay Process Company, Anaconda, and Grasselli Chemical offered to buy Sperry's Niagara plant, but after a number of lengthy patent infringement suits, Hooker's Development and Funding Company purchased the operation. After the sale to Hooker, Sperry began working on a detinning process that he was forced to sell to the American Can Company when he found himself the defendant in a series of patent infringement suits.

After this experience, Sperry began to turn his attention to gyroscopic technology, developing the ship stabilizer and gyrocompass in the years before the First World War. In 1910 he founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company.