Lawrence Sperry

Lawrence Burst Sperry (21 December 1892, Chicago, Illinois, United States – December 13, 1923, English Channel) was an aviation pioneer who invented the autopilot and the artificial horizon.

Biography Sperry was the third son of the gyrocompass co-inventor, Elmer Ambrose Sperry, and his wife Zula. Sperry invented the first autopilot, which he demonstrated with startling success in France in 1914. Sperry is also credited with developing the artificial horizon still used on most aircraft in the early 21st century.

In 1918, he married film actress Winifred Allen, and Flying Magazine reported that they were "the first couple to take an aerial honeymoon" after they flew from Amityville to Governors Island.

On 13 December 1923, Sperry took off amid fog in a Verville-Sperry M-1 Messenger from the United Kingdom headed for France but never reached his destination. His body was found in the English Channel on 11 January 1924.

Legacy A website using the name Mile High Club regards Sperry as the "Club's" "founder", along with "socialite Mrs. Waldo Peirce" (Dorothy Rice Sims) citing their flight in an autopilot-equipped Curtiss Flying Boat near New York in November 1916.

Why, Mrs Peirce and I didn't have what you might dignify by calling a real accident. It was only a trivial mishap. We decided to land on the water and came down perfectly from a height of 600 feet and would have made a perfect landing had not the hull of our machine struck one of the stakes that dot the water, which staved a hole in it.

Sperry was inducted into the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, in 1992.

Sperry Award winners The Lawrence Sperry Award is presented by the AIAA for a notable contribution made by a young person, age 35 or under, to the advancement of aeronautics or astronautics.

1936 William C. Rockefeller 1937 Kelly Johnson (engineer) 1938 Russell C. Newhouse 1939 Charles M Kearns Jr. 1941 Ernest G. Stout 1942 Edward C. Wells 1967 Gene Kranz 1970 Glynn Lunney 1984 Sally Ride 1985 William P. Lear 1986 Parviz Moin 1987 James L. Thomas 1988 David W. Thompson 1989 Cas P. Van Dam 1990 Ilan M. Kroo 1991 Mark Drela 1992 John T. Batina 1993 Tim Barth 1994 William K. Anderson 1995 William P Schonberg 1996 Penina Axelrad 1997 John Kallinderis 1998 Iain D. Boyd 1999 Robert D. Braun 2000 Anna-Maria R. McGowan 2001 Keith A Comeaux 2002 Edward C. Smith 2003 Myles L. Baker 2004 Jeffrey D. Jordan 2005 Tim C. Lieuwen 2006 Lynn Nicole Smith 2007 Amy Pritchett 2008 Ryan P. Starkey 2009 Adam Rasheed 2010 Mitchell L. Walker II 2011 M. Brett McMickell 2012 Hamsa Balakrishnan 2013 Eric J. Ruggiero 2014 Kimberley C. Clayfield 2015 Jeremy T. Pinier 2016 Joshua Rovey 2017 Karen T. Berger 2018 Michael D. West 2019 Katya M. Casper 2020 Patrick R. C. Neumann 2021 Benjamin Jorns 2022 Michael P. Snyder