After completing his common-school education Sperry spent three years at the State Normal and Training School (now State University of New York College at Cortland).
College/University
Gallery of Elmer Sperry
Ithaca, NY 14850, United States
Sperry studied for a year of casual attendance at Cornell, 1878-1879.
After completing his common-school education Sperry spent three years at the State Normal and Training School (now State University of New York College at Cortland).
Elmer Ambrose Sperry was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous as co-inventor, with Herman Anschütz-Kaempfe of the gyrocompass and as the founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. His compasses and stabilizers were adopted by the United States Navy and used in both world wars.
Background
Ethnicity:
Sperry was a descendant of Richard Sperry who came to America from England and settled in the New Haven Colony between 1640 and 1650.
Sperry was born on October 12, 1860, in Cincinnatus, New York, to Stephen Decatur Sperry and Mary Burst. His family had been in what is now the Northeastern United States since the 1600's, and his earliest American ancestor was an English colonist named Richard Sperry. His mother died the next day, from complications from his birth.
Education
From his father, who was engaged in the production, transportation, and sale of lumber, Sperry may have inherited his leaning toward machinery, and from his mother his keen mathematical sense. During his school days, he took every opportunity to examine and study the machinery in the various shops and factories there and in the laboratories at Cornell University, not far away.
After completing his common-school education he spent three years at the State Normal and Training School (now State University of New York College at Cortland), and a year of casual attendance at Cornell, 1878-1879.
For a time Sperry worked in a book bindery after school hours, and with the money he saved, and through an arrangement made possible by the Young Men's Christian Association, he visited the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. This visit, with the inspiration he received from the mechanical exhibits he saw there, he always regarded as having determined the direction of his career.
Upon completing this work early in 1880, he went to Chicago, Illinois, and there founded the Sperry Electric Company to manufacture dynamos and arc lamps, and also other electrical appliances. His factory was opened on his twentieth birthday, and in two or three years many industrial plants and municipalities in the Northwest were furnished with Sperry arc light equipment.
One of his most notable installations was the 40,000 candle-power electric beacon on the Board of Trade tower, 350 feet high, the highest beacon in the world at that time. In the middle eighties, Sperry turned his attention to the application of electricity to mining, and in 1888 organized the Sperry Electric Mining Machine Company to manufacture an electrically driven, undercutting, punching machine for use in soft coal mines. He subsequently perfected a continuous chain undercutter, and designed new electric generators and electric mine locomotives, the manufacture of which was undertaken by the Goodman Manufacturing Company of Chicago.
From electric mine locomotives it was but a short step to electric street-railway cars, and in 1890 Sperry founded the Sperry Electric Railway Company and established a plant for the manufacture of his cars at Cleveland, Ohio.
He operated this concern until 1894, adding constantly his own patented improvements to the equipment, and then sold the plant and all his patents bearing on street railway machinery to the General Electric Company. Turning next to electric automobiles, he was engaged from 1894 to 1900 in the manufacture of electric carriages of his own design, having as their particular feature an improved storage battery capable of operating a vehicle over the remarkable distance of one hundred miles.
For the production of his patented storage battery the National Battery Company was organized, with works at Buffalo. Meanwhile, Sperry had become interested in electro-chemistry, and about 1900 established in Washington, a research laboratory which he maintained for upwards of ten years. He had there as his associate C. P. Townsend, an electrochemist, and between them they evolved the so-called Townsend Process for manufacturing pure caustic soda from salt, accompanied by the production of hydrogen and chlorine compounds; this process has since been used extensively by one of the largest manufacturers of soda and chlorine products at Niagara Falls, New York. Another of their achievements was the chlorine detaining process, for recovering tin from old cans and scrap; this process, involving some thirty patents, was taken over by the Goldsmith Detaining Company.
During these years Sperry also devised machinery for producing electric fuse wire, and established the Chicago Fuse Wire Company to manufacture it. As early as 1890 he began investigations and experiments looking toward the development of a compound internal combustion engine using low-grade fuel oil, in other words, a compound Diesel engine. This work was started in Chicago, continued in Cleveland, and after 1910, carried on in Brooklyn, New York; at the time of Sperry's death eight distinct experimental engines had been produced, and the work was still in progress.
Sperry's most distinctive inventions, however, were those which put to practical use the principles of the gyroscope, which had been for several centuries merely an amazing toy. He began work on this project about 1896, and through tedious and expensive investigation and great ingenuity overcame the obstacles involved and successfully combined electrical and mechanical elements into gyroscopic compasses and stabilizers for ships and airplanes which have been great contributions to the safety and comfort of the navigation of the sea and air. The Sperry Gyroscope Company was established in Brooklyn in 1910, in which year Sperry's first compass was tried out on the battleship Delaware at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The compass was shortly adopted by the United States Navy; during the World War it was used in the navies of the Allies, and subsequently by more than sixty steamship lines. The gyroscopic stabilizers for ships appeared in 1913, and in 1914 Sperry's airplane stabilizer was awarded the first prize of 50, 000 francs by the French government, through the Aero Club, in a contest for safety devices for airplanes. In 1918 Sperry produced his high-intensity arc searchlight, 500 percent brighter than any light previously made; at the time of his death, it was the standard searchlight of the principal armies and navies of the world. Because of its high actinic value, it proved useful also in a totally different sphere, making possible the taking of motion pictures indoors, without the sun. In 1929 Sperry disposed of the Sperry Gyroscope Company and organized Sperry Products, Inc., to continue investigation and research in other fields. Before he died he had just completed a device for detecting flaws in railroad rails.
American Institute of Electrical Engineers
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United States
American Electro-Chemical Society
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United States
American Association for the Advancement of Science
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United States
American Physical Society
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United States
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
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United States
Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers
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United States
New York Electrical Society
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United States
American Petroleum Institute
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United States
Edison Pioneers
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United States
National Aeronautical Association
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United States
Aero Club of America
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United States
Engineers' Club
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United States
National Electric Light Association
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United States
Franklin Institute
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United States
Japan Society
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Japan
National Academy of Sciences
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United States
Museum of the Peaceful Arts
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United States
Personality
Sperry possessed the very unusual combination of inventive ability and clever business sense. He was intensely interested in promoting a better understanding between the peoples of the United States and Japan and devoted much of his time in his later years to this work.
Connections
Sperry married Zula A. Goodman of Chicago on June 28, 1887, and at the time of his death in Brooklyn was survived by two sons and a daughter. Another son had lost his life in 1923, flying an airplane over the English Channel.