13 Facts About Sperry Rand

Sperry Rand Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century.

Sperry Rand ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs Corporation, which merged the combined operation under the new name Unisys.

Sperry Rand again became independent in 1933 as the Sperry Corporation.

Sperry Rand made advanced aircraft navigation equipment for the market, including the Sperry Gyroscope and the Sperry Radio Direction Finder.

Sperry Rand supported the work of a group of Stanford University inventors, led by Russell and Sigurd Varian, who had invented the klystron, and incorporated this technology and related inventions into their products.

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Sperry Rand was the creator of the Ball Turret Gun mounted under the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, as commemorated by the film Memphis Belle and the poem The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.

In 1961, Sperry Rand was ranked 34th on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies in the United States.

In 1978, Sperry Rand decided to concentrate on its computing interests, and sold a number of divisions including Remington Rand Systems, Remington Rand Machines, Ford Instrument Company and Sperry Vickers.

Sperry Rand dropped "Rand" from its title and reverted to Sperry Corporation.

At about the same time as the Rand acquisition, Sperry Gyroscope decided to open a facility that would almost exclusively produce its marine instruments.

Sperry Rand managed the operation from 1961 to 1975 of the large Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant near Minden.

In January 1972, Sperry Rand took over the RCA line of electronic digital computers .

Sperry Rand subsequently expanded to the Golden Mile, Brentford in 1931, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire in 1938, and Bracknell in 1957.