HISTORY • Spe • Inventing the 20th Century by George Colpitts he last years of the 19th century an engineer, initiator of dozens of cor­ known as "that Sperry boy." But by the began the golden age of the porations, including the Sperry-Rand time he was a farmhand adolescent, his Telectronics hobbyist. Henry, corporation, and the dreamer behind mechanical aptitude and avid reading Foucault and Ohm might have modem avionics, gyro-compasses and joined together in a mind that in­ previously fine-tuned principles of truly closed-looped systems. novated, it seems, without coaxing. electricity and physics, but it was back­ With little education apart from the At 19, Sperry perfected the closed­ yard tinkerers such as Edison, Weston reading of 19th Century Scientific loop, or self-regulating arc lamp. A few and Siemens who hammered such years later he was perfecting mining principles into every-day life. Often machinery, developing street cars at odds with academic scientists, which· impressed the world, and wild-haired inventors and armchair delving into electro-chemistry. In science buffs experimented with the the 1890s, he patented a storage bat­ internal combustible engine for tery which drove an electrical car 87 cars, dangled from unstable miles (other batteries at the time dirigibles or killed themselves in charged for 30iniles at most). The elaborate airplanes. Store Sperry gyroscope, the searchlight catalogues and patent monthlies which lit up skies laden with World were crowded with contraptions War One Zeppelins, the gyro-com­ reflecting the come-hell-or-high­ pass, the automatic ship stabilizer, water determination of their and the automatic pilot for aircraft creators. "Invention is 95 per cent eventually became his children. perspiration," Edison had said, And children they were. Sperry's probably without exaggeration and ideas were borne on paper with pen­ most innovation amassed man­ cil; his ability to visualize and draw hours which would make modem concepts, systems and electrical R&D groups cringe. But the years theory was so complete he was able were exciting. These hobbyists until his death in 1930, to pass pages eventually created, patented and ElmerAmbrose Sperry of diagrams and sketches to en- sold modem convenience, the degree gineers · sufficient to initiate yet American magazines . and patent jour­ of which we have never been able to another Sperry product. More than nals, Sperry began his career as inven­ fully match. visualized, most of his 400 patented in­ tor in home-State New York. As a boy Any look at early innovators would ventions gained personalities in the he had set his veranda on fire ex­ have to include inventor-extraordin­ perimenting with benzine vapours, in­ Sperry mind. He described them as "he" naire, Elmer Ambrose Sperry, whose or "that brute" or "that fellow." jured a playmate with a homemade hands produced gadgetry which Although he grasped blueprint in­ glass-blowing outfit and was generally changed the planet. He was lionized as tricacies, Sperry was a slow reader, and 8 • Feb/March 1991 Electronics & Technology Today •. ': ..:.:,-' j.' ~~ .)'~ ~·)·~· ... ,,~:-:-· . A ' ' >/ Movement in "error" ac· . lh;;· ··' . Ln·a.de- -- I~-+ "to ., . .S.Ur.llJ·))(Oiol· Uieijht· ~t-JZ,68olbs ' tivated a servomechanism UroJdds ~iz~ J:.st ott-~. '"!'~;;:....•• ·,·· . ") 1 ~ll DTl {Jra,w bJLl"~500 l!,. that rotated the brushes Of the generator until the out- put matched the desired current. When Zula turned the switch, saying playfully, "let there be light," the twenty lights suspended on a ring burst 40,000 candles of light as far as Michigan City, 60 miles distant. Chicago streetcar conduc­ tors and drivers reported that all viaducts in the city were well lit, and light reached city limits. "The atmosphere was very luminous," said The Sperry streetcar at the Chicago World's Fair, 1893. Elmer Sperry, right, has his handon the brake. Chicago Tribune, "and as far away as Douglas Park friends who had to read silent movie created previously but had limitations houses cast shadows from the light .... " subtitles aloud to Sperry, were relieved f~r lighting public places. For Sperry, the closed-loop design when talkies were produced. A Over the previous two years, Sperry for the arc lamp carried into most of his notorious speller,. he wrote in a had been attacking the two major weak­ other inventions. By 1893, he was notebook, "Hydrochloric acid out of nesses in arc lighting. First, he had demonstrating a superior hill-climbing salt by electroleciss." He lived in fear of designed a generator that produced a street car at the Chicago World's Fair his teacher's warnings that a poor constant current despite variations in with a developed power transmission, speller, "might be able to ·attain the dig­ the speed of the steam engine driving it. electric brake and related controller. nity of a grocer's clerk ... but nothing Second, Sperry had developed automat­ The electric brake was interesting. In­ more." "Now that I have lived it down," ic regulation of that generator to supply stead of using an electromagnet to pull he said later, "I can see that the whole constant current despite load variations the brake shoe against the braking sur­ world does not revolve around spell­ - especially when arc lights were cut face of the wheel, he designed an an­ ing." out of a circuit. nular electromagnet concentric with the Sperry's world revolved around tech­ Sperry was really beginning present­ nology. Yes, he became a proficient day cybernetics, and even speaker, polished public figure, and though closed-looped writer of passionate poetry to his wife, systems have always but Sperry was most comfortable in the been attractive to iritricacies of electricity and engineer­ electronic and mechanic WIRELESS GUITAR ing. As biographer Thomas Hughes buffs, few up to Sperry said, "Sperry expressed himself in tech­ had been able to develop TRANSMISSION SYSTEM nology." so complete self-regulat­ Sperry's first chance to express him­ ing mechanisms. self came on New Year's Eve in Sperry's arc lamp car­ Chicago, 1885, having laboured for ried "error signal" intel­ weeks installing what he termed the ligence. Within the gen­ greatest concentration of light in the erator, an adjustable world- bundled arc lamps -atop the spring was set for the 300-foot tower of the Chicago Board of desired current and an Trade building. Waiting at the lighting electromagnet with a BUILD YOUR OWN switch was heart throb and future wife movable armature repre­ FOR UNDER $100 Zula Goodman. sented the actual current. COMPLETE PLANS AND DOUBLE SIDED/PLATED THRU-HOLE PCB On the whole, Chicago was dimly lit. The force of · the FOR ONLY $14.95 (PST extra) ' Gas lighting flickered down its streets electromagnet tended to SEND CHEQUE OR MONEY ORDER TO: but only barely lighting sidewalks. move the armature in one RadioActive Transmissions 45 Bramalea Ad, Box 131 Edison's high-resistance, carbon-fila­ direction and the tension Brampton, Ontario L6T 2W4 ment incandescent bulb had been of the spring, attached to the armature, in the other. Circle Reader Service Card No.55 Electronics & Technology Today Feb/March 1991 • 9 axle of the wheel, but attached to the frame of the vehicle. Street car innovations naturally lent itself to the still-developing automobile design. Sperry's fingers were on almost every form of technology rapidly form­ ing, the "horsel~ss carriage" being no exception. Automobiles were being developed in Europe and North America along two philosophies. The internal combustion design, broadly patented by George Baldwin Selden, hiccuped a lot of smoke and noise. The more expensive alternative, which Sperry's "six electrics" were built around, relied on ' electricity. Sperry had unwavering faith in electricity. He had a gasoline vehicle at The Sperryfl171UI)~ about 1910. Standing: (L. toRt.) Lawrence. Elmer, Jr., Helen. one time, "a thing of beauty with two Seated: Elmer Sperry, Edward, Zula. cylinders, steered by a tiller, upholstered in English Wilton and The other problem Sperry addressed gular motion in a plane at right angles to trimmed with aluminum." But the car was stability. Tum-of-the-century the upsetting force, was central to al­ r--------------.....:.-------, vehicles tended to most all Sperry's application of the flip easily. Sperry's gyro. And these applications soon own son, Elmer, Jr. changed the nature of shipping and L>w l'.l;un(L~ ro_ ·.,h t '. ~ rr-alut C?' ~~-.~ )lo! - tilttr.~ !on~!. narrowly escaped aviation. injury when he was Sperry's life-long fascination with thrown from a car the gyro was not unique to the Victorian and Sperry saw the mindset. The forces at work within a most pressing spinning gyroscope were as full of concern was to sta­ promise- and elusive to control - as bilize the vehicle, 20th century theories of fusion energy. and he turned, as he From the 1880s onwards, dozens of did throughout his hackers had filed gyro application life, to the gyro- patents and few of them worked. scope. In the early 1900s Sperry brought From The Sperry Gyroscope Co., "The Sperry Ship Stabilizer" Sperry had ap­ home a gyroscope top for his sons to proached ' Barnum play with but confessed that he hogged was destroyed in a workshop fire, and and Bailey with his first gyro-inven­ most of its use. Through their growing seeing the wreckage Sperry said to his tion: the "wonderful trained wheel-bar- up years, his sons were deluged with sons, "that's what you get for deserting row," a wheelbarrow .-------....;_---------------, electricity." concealing a gyro that Of course, Sperry approached his car allowed tightrope design from different angles. He ap­ walkers to hop in and plied for auto patents for air-cooling the around it without motor, a control system, power-trans­ losing their balance.