www.marinelink.com 37
tually the U.S. Navy came around and
adopted his compasses and stabilizers in
1911 after successful trials on the USS
Delaware and USS Drayton - as did the
French, British and Italian Navies.
The Navy also began using Sperry’s
gyroscope-guided autopilot steering sys-
tem, variously called a “Metal” or “Iron”
Mike.
“It was a big manpower saver because
you didn’t need a helmsman,” said Dal-
ton. “I had captains when I sailed who
did not want seamen on the wheel be-
cause the autopilot used less fuel. Many
captains believed the autopilot steered
better than men.”
The Drayton trial produced the re-
peater compass and the target-bearing
pointer. This was followed by a request
from the Navy to examine the fi re con-
trol problems faced by ships bearing
long range guns.
Ship gun fi re-control systems (GFCS)
enable remote and automatic targeting of
guns, with or without the aid of radar or
optical sighting. Sperry developed the
fi rst full gun battery fi re control systems,
which were placed aboard every U.S.
battleship during World War I.
Before the advent of the fi re control
systems, if a gunner aimed a gun and
the boat pitched, his gun would end up
pointing in the water. But Sperry gave
the gun mounts turrets that prevent the
ship’s pitch from interfering with the tra-
jectory of the gun.
Sperry also provided the Navy with a
5-ton device called a gyro stabilizer, de-
signed to keep ships from rolling, The
Navy installed it on the USS Worden,
and another one on a submarine. The on-
set of WWI put further orders on hold.
In 1910, Sperry started the Sperry Gy-
roscope Company in Brooklyn to sell his
inventions, locating near the port of New
York so ship captains could easily visit
his factory.
Among the projects the company
worked on during World War I was an
autopilot for airplanes, gunfi re control
systems, machine guns that could eas-
ily track their targets, bomb sights and
gyroscopically-guided aerial torpedoes.
Like so many of his earlier inventions,
these often relied on automatic control
and feedback systems. In 1918, he pro-
duced a high-intensity arc lamp that had
an unheard of brilliance equal to that of
a billion candles. It was used as a search-
light by both the Army and Navy, and
helped to fend off German air raids on
London and Paris.
In the midst of all that activity Naval
Secretary Josephus Daniels launched the
Naval Consulting Board in 1915 with
the help of Thomas Edison to put the
brightest minds of technology and sci-
ence to work for the war effort. Sperry
was tapped as part of the inaugural crew
and went on to lead several committees,
and eventually held the chairmanship.
It was there he and his son Lawrence
teamed up with Peter Hewitt to develop
the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, a
so-called “fl ying bomb” and one of the
fi rst successful precursors of unmanned
aerial vehicles, or as they are called to-
day, drones. It is considered by some to
be a precursor of the cruise missile.
“Torpedos never were especially ac-
curate. A gyroscope helped keep them
running straight and true,” according to
Kings Point’s Smith.
Also in 1915, Anschütz-Kaempfe
slapped Sperry with a patent lawsuit
over his gyroscope technology after
Sperry attempted to sell his gyroscope
to the German Navy. Anschütz-Kaempfe
retained as an expert witness, a young
Swiss patent offi ce employee named
Albert Einstein. In a trial that dragged
out over two years, Einstein shredded
Sperry’s defense, and Anschütz-Kaemp-
fe won the lawsuit in Germany. Sperry,
however, prevailed with his patent in the
U.S. and the U.K.
After the war, one of Sperry’s last ac-
complishment came in September 1929,
when Sperry engineers working with the
U.S. Army Air Corps, developed and
successfully tested two new capabilities
– the artifi cial horizon and the aircraft
directional gyro – recording the fi rst
all-blind fl ight in history. The technol-
ogy was quickly adopted by commercial
airlines and installed aboard mail planes.
An Iron Legacy
The reach and enormity of Sperry’s
contribution to naval science, offensive
weaponry and the navigation and control
of transports on water and in the air, can-
not be overstated. It stretches well be-
yond his lifetime and is still working to
aid sailors, pilots and the military around
the globe.
Sperry, once a member of countless
technical and scientifi c societies, was the
recipient of numerous awards and hon-
ors.
In 1941 the Navy christened the USS
Sperry (AS-12) in his honor, while the
Post Offi ce introduced an airmail stamp
in recognition of the contributions of
both father and son to fl ight.
Today, there are a number of awards
given out in his name, including one
from Northrup Grumman given to a U.S.
Naval Academy midshipman every year,
one from Honeywell and the Elmer A.
Sperry Award for “advancing the art of
transportation engineering,’’ given out
by a consortium of societies he once be-
long to.
According to Sperry biographer
Hughes, among the many upon whom
the inventor made a great impression
was Helen Keller, no stranger to fame
and admiration herself.
Sperry went out of his way to “show”
her how the gyroscope worked, the
movement of the compass and the
brightness of the arc lights.
A “wonder-fi lled” Keller summed it up
best when she said she thought Sperry
would be remembered for a compass
and a star for “if there were no other im-
mortality, you would live forever in that
achievement.”
And so he will.
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