Inventor Name
Sperry, Elmer Ambrose
Repository
Hagley Museum & Library
Manuscripts & Archives Department
P.O. Box 3630
Wilmington, DE 19807-0630
302-658-2400
https://www.hagley.org/research
Physical Description
3 linear ft.
Summary
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. The Elmer Sperry papers contain a complete record of his published patents (1882-1933). The collection also includes his laboratory notebooks from 1882-1929. These notebooks can be used to trace the evolution of Elmer Sperry's approach to arc lighting, street railways, electrochemistry, gyroscopic technology, internal combustion engines, and the technological problems he encountered with each of these projects. Sperry was very articulate in his notebooks and explored a variety of technological and scientific issues in them. It is evident that he drew on the work of a number of academic physicists and mathematicians and tried to apply their insights to experimental problems. Sperry's notebooks contain a large number of sketches that reflect an appreciation of modern science. However, the diaries also show that in many ways Sperry was a nineteenth-century artist-engineer rather than a modern scientist whose insights are based on mathematical models.
