Early history The company was incorporated on April 14 1910 by Elmer Ambrose Sperry as the
Sperry Gyroscope Company, to manufacture navigation equipment—chiefly his own inventions: the marine
gyrostabilizer and the
gyrocompass—at 40 Flatbush Avenue Extension in
Downtown Brooklyn. During
World War I the company diversified into aircraft components including
bomb sights and
fire control systems. In their early decades, Sperry Gyroscope and related companies were concentrated on
Long Island, New York, especially in
Nassau County. Over the years, it diversified to other locations. In 1918,
Lawrence Sperry split from his father to compete over aero-instruments with the
Lawrence Sperry Aircraft Company, including the new
automatic pilot. After the death of Lawrence on December 13, 1923, the two firms were brought together in 1924. Then in January 1929 it was acquired by
North American Aviation, who reincorporated it in New York as the
Sperry Gyroscope Company, Inc. The company once again became independent in 1933 when it was spun-off as a subsidiary of the newly formed
Sperry Corporation. The new corporation was a holding company for a number of smaller entities such as the original Sperry Gyroscope,
Ford Instrument Company,
Intercontinental Aviation, Inc., and others. The company made advanced aircraft navigation equipment for the market, including the Sperry Gyroscope and the Sperry Radio Direction Finder. It also moved into the hydraulics industry when it acquired Vickers, Inc. in 1937. Sperry 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. The company prospered during
World War II as military demand skyrocketed, ranking 19th among US corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. It specialized in high technology devices such as
analog computer–controlled bomb sights,
airborne radar systems, and automated take-off and landing systems. Sperry also was the creator of the
Ball Turret Gun mounted under the
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and the
Consolidated B-24 Liberator. In 1944, Sperry sold the Brooklyn factory at 40 Flatbush Avenue Extension to the Howard clothing manufacturing company, which already had a smaller nearby factory. Postwar, Sperry expanded its interests in electronics and computing, producing the company's first digital computer,
SPEEDAC, in 1953. During the 1950s, a large part of Sperry Gyroscope moved to
Phoenix, Arizona and renamed as
Sperry Flight Systems Company. The geographic split was intended as a hedge in the event of a
nuclear war. The Gyroscope division remained headquartered in New York—in its massive
Lake Success, Long Island, plant (which also served as the temporary
United Nations headquarters from 1946 to 1952)—into the 1980s.
Sperry Rand In 1955, Sperry acquired
Remington Rand and renamed itself
Sperry Rand. Acquiring the
Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and
Engineering Research Associates along with Remington Rand, the company developed the successful
UNIVAC computer series and signed a valuable cross-licensing deal with
IBM. The company remained a major military contractor. From 1967 to 1973, the corporation was involved in an acrimonious
antitrust lawsuit with
Honeywell, Inc. (see
Honeywell v. Sperry Rand). In 1961, Sperry Rand was ranked 34th on the
Fortune 500 list of largest companies in the United States. In 1977, Sperry Rand purchased
Varian Data Machines so as to enter the
minicomputer market. Varian would be renamed as the Sperry UNIVAC Minicomputer Operation, operating as part of the Sperry UNIVAC division. 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. The company dropped "Rand" from its title and reverted to
Sperry Corporation. At about the same time as the Remington Rand acquisition, Sperry Gyroscope decided to open a facility that would almost exclusively produce its marine instruments. After considerable searching and evaluation, a plant was built in
Charlottesville, Virginia, and in 1956, Sperry Piedmont Division began producing marine navigation products. It was later renamed
Sperry Marine. In the 1970s, Sperry Corporation was a traditional conglomerate headquartered in the Sperry Rand Building at 1290 Avenue of Americas in Manhattan, selling typewriters (Sperry Remington); office equipment, electronic digital computers for business and the military (Sperry Univac); construction and farm equipment (Sperry New Holland); avionics, such as gyroscopes, radars, air route traffic control equipment (Sperry Vickers/Sperry Flight Systems); and consumer products such as electric razors (Sperry Remington). In addition, Sperry Systems Management (headquartered in the original Sperry Gyroscope building in Lake Success) performed work on a number of US government contracts. Sperry also managed the operation from 1961 to 1975 of the large
Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant near
Minden. In January 1972, Sperry took over the
RCA Spectra 70 line of electronic digital computers (architectural cousins to the IBM
System/360). In 1983, Sperry sold Vickers to
Libbey Owens Ford (later to be renamed TRINOVA Corporation and subsequently Aeroquip-Vickers). At the same time, it acquired the
Aircraft Radio Corporation from
Cessna.
Burroughs takeover On September 16, 1986, after the success of a second
hostile takeover bid engineered by
Burroughs Corporation CEO and former
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury,
Michael Blumenthal, Sperry Corporation merged with Burroughs Corporation. The newly merged company was renamed
Unisys Corporation—a portmanteau of "united", "information", and "systems," while also referencing Sperry's well-known previous UNIVAC computer branding. The takeover came about even after Sperry used a "
poison pill" in the form of a major share price hike to dissuade the hostile bid, the result of which caused Burroughs to borrow much more funding than was anticipated to complete the bid. Certain internal divisions of Sperry were sold off after the merger, such as
Sperry New Holland (1986, to
Ford Motor Company, which in 1991 sold the Ford-New Holland line to
Fiat) and
Sperry Marine (to
Tenneco, in 1987, and is currently part of
Northrop Grumman). Also sold—to
Honeywell—was
Sperry Aerospace Group, while
Sperry Defense Products Group was sold to
Loral; those two units whose functions were originally at the heart of the venerable Sperry Gyroscope division. This group is now part of
Lockheed Martin.
British Sperry Sperry in Britain started with a factory in
Pimlico, London, in 1913, manufacturing gyroscopic compasses for the
Royal Navy. It became the Sperry Gyroscope Co Ltd in 1915. In 1923,
Lawrence Sperry was killed in an air crash near
Rye, Sussex. The company subsequently expanded to the
Golden Mile,
Brentford, in 1931,
Stonehouse, Gloucestershire in 1938, and
Bracknell in 1957. By 1963, these sites employed some 3,500 people. The site of the Bracknell factory and development center (sold to
British Aerospace in 1982) is commemorated by a 4.5-meter aluminum sculpture by
Philip Bentham, ''Sperry's New Symbolic Gyroscope'' (1967). In 1989, the Bracknell site was downsized and work was moved to the Sperry manufacturing site in
Plymouth by then under the
British Aerospace brand. State of the art, high technology
MEMS gyroscopes (together with other avionics equipment) are still made on the site today, although the company is now owned by
United Technologies Corporation and is part of
UTC Aerospace Systems.
Sperry since 1997 The name Sperry lives on in the company
Sperry Marine, headquartered in
New Malden, England. This company, formed in 1997, from three well-known brand names in the marine industry—Sperry Marine,
Decca, and C. Plath—is now part of
Northrop Grumman Corporation. It is a worldwide supplier of navigation, communication, information and automation systems for commercial marine and naval markets. ==Products==