Sperry, Lawrence Burst, LT

With the outbreak of World War I weeks later, Sperry's life changed. He offered to serve in a French frontline squadron as an experienced pilot, but to his dismay officials turned him down because he lacked a college degree. Undaunted, he returned to the United States to continue his research.

So far, Sperry had flown hydroplanes almost exclusively, but he began to think about creating a dual-purpose aircraft. He reasoned that a flying boat could carry a retractable landing gear so that it could also operate from a land base. The result: The Aerial Age Weekly issue of March 29, 1915, featured an article with Sperry demonstrating what was the first wheeled retractable landing gear in an amphibian.

The Sperry Gyroscope Company, of Brooklyn - with Elmer Sr. and Lawrence working in tandem - soon developed an unpiloted aircraft that could fly to a target guided by the Sperry gyroscopic device. But that turned out to be an idea ahead of its time. (The concept would resurface during World War II.)

Lawrence traveled to Britain and returned in 1916 with a briefcase crammed full of orders for what is now famous as the automatic pilot. At age 24, he had become a well-known inventor. In 1916 he was also commissioned a lieutenant junior grade by the U.S. Navy and assigned as a flight instructor.

Lawrence Sperry never rested on his laurels. Between 1915 and 1923, he had 23 patents either pending or granted. Among his inventions was instrumentation that permitted aircraft to be piloted when visibility was zero. His bank-and-turn indicator and artificial horizon have remained the basic instruments for every aircraft from the Boeing 747 to the Piper Cub. He also came up with a variety of other instrumentation, including an airspeed indicator, a drift indicator and a significant improvement over the (British) Creaghton-Osborne liquid-filled magnetic compass.

After the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, Sperry continued research on an aerial torpedo that was actually a guided bomb. Working in concert with automotive inventor Charles Kettering, he produced a prototype of a pilotless aircraft rigged to fly a preset course to a designated target. Another member of that research team was 1st Lt. James Doolittle of the U.S. Army, whose name would become a household word in the three decades to come. The project, called the 'Bug,' was not entirely successful, largely due to the unreliability of the engines used.

The Sperry-Kettering research, however, provided the guidance principles utilized in Germany's later development of a flying bomb, the Vergeltungswaffe-1 (V-1 vengeance weapon), in 1944. The Germans solved the problem of unreliable power plants by using a simple and reliable pulse-jet engine, which required an absolute minimum of moving parts.

While testing the Bug in March 1918, Sperry - who was serving as pilot - crashed, suffering a broken pelvis that immobilized him for three months. During his recovery he spent time on calculations that would result in a new and improved parachute. By the time he was released from the hospital, he knew he had invented a seemingly foolproof seat, or backpack, parachute. His design would eliminate the problem of a parachute becoming entangled in aircraft empennage. To test his device, he went to the roof of the Garden City Hotel, on Long Island, and let his parachute fill and drag him from the roof. It performed as designed, and he landed safely. The Sperry parachute soon entered production.

At WWI's end the entire nation turned to civilian diversions, and Sperry shifted gears as well. As the result of a conversation with Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, assistant chief of the U.S. Air Service, Sperry designed and built an inexpensive sport plane, the Sperry Messenger, which could reach 95 miles per hour. It had a 20-foot wingspan and was powered by a 3-cylinder radial engine that delivered 30 miles to the gallon.

Mitchell was so impressed by the design that the Army ordered a dozen for general service. The Messenger was also well received by civilian aviators and appeared at airports around the country.

Sperry used a Messenger to commute from his Brooklyn home to the factory on Long Island. He would routinely land and take off from the parade grounds on Parkside Avenue, adjacent to Prospect Park, and leave his aircraft at a convenient police station at the western end of the impromptu landing field. His home on Marlborough Road and the site of his initial aircraft production plant were within easy walking distance.

An experienced pilot with more than 4,000 hours of flight time, fully trained to fly by instruments alone, Sperry had no hesitation in taking off in any weather conditions. His personal aircraft was always fully equipped with instrumentation of his design. On December 23, 1923, he took off from Britain for a quick flight to France, undeterred by the fact that the Channel was fogbound. Somewhere en route, however, his luck ran out. Whether due to mechanical failure or inability to navigate over the Channel, he never reached his destination. The Messenger he had personally designed was found in the water. Sperry's body was recovered on January 11, 1924.