Elmer Sperry was known as the "father of modern navigation technology".
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17 Facts About Elmer Sperry
2.
Elmer Sperry worked closely with Japanese companies and the Japanese government and was honored after his death with a volume of reminiscences published in Japan.
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3.
Elmer Sperry's mother died the next day, from complications from his birth.
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4.
Elmer Sperry's family had been in what is the Northeastern United States since the 1600s, and his earliest American ancestor was an English colonist named Richard Sperry.
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5.
Elmer Sperry spent three years at the State Normal School in Cortland, New York, then a year at Cornell University in 1878 and 1879, where he became interested in dynamos.
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7.
In 1887, Elmer Sperry created a system to bring electricity into coal mines, heating the copper wires to prevent corrosion.
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8.
In 1900 Sperry established an electrochemical laboratory at Washington, D C, where he and his associate, Clifton P Townshend, developed a process for making pure caustic soda and discovered a process for recovering tin from scrap metal.
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9.
In 1911, Elmer Sperry worked with the US Navy to incorporate his gyroscopic stabilizer, which greatly reduced major roll of the ship, into Navy ships.
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10.
In 1913, working with his son Lawrence Burst Elmer Sperry, Elmer Sperry created a gyro that could control the elevators and ailerons of an aircraft through a series of servos.
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11.
Elmer Sperry successfully implemented his gyrostablizer technology, formerly thought to be only applicable to large ships, because of their high weight, into aircraft.
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12.
Elmer Sperry was awarded a Franklin Institute Medal in the same year.
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13.
In 1916, Elmer Sperry joined Peter Hewitt to develop the Hewitt-Elmer Sperry Automatic Airplane, one of the first successful precursors of the UAV.
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14.
In 1917, Elmer Sperry solved the issue of magnetic compasses indicating the opposite position when an aircraft is turning, inventing the Gyro Turn Indicator.
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15.
Elmer Sperry's technology was used in torpedoes, ships, airplanes, and spacecraft.
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16.
Elmer Sperry moved into related devices such as bombsights, fire control, radar, and automated take off and landing.
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17.
In January 1929, Elmer Sperry sold his Elmer Sperry Gyroscope Company to North American Aviation.
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