Everything about Sperry Corporation totally explained
Sperry Corporation (
1910-
1986) was a major American equipment and
electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the
twentieth century. Through a series of mergers they exist today as a portion of
Unisys.
Early history
The company was founded in
1910 as the
Sperry Gyroscope Company by
Elmer Ambrose Sperry to manufacture navigation equipment, chiefly his own inventions – the marine
gyrostabilizer and the
gyrocompass. 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. In 1924 following the death of Lawrence on December 13, 1923, the two firms were brought together. The company became
Sperry Corporation in
1933. 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 did very well during
World War II as military demand skyrocketed; 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 infamous
Ball Turret Gun that was mounted under the
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and the
Consolidated B-24 Liberator, as commemorated by the films
Memphis Belle and the poem
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. Postwar, the company 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 was moved to
Phoenix, Arizona and soon thereafter became the
Sperry Flight Systems Company. This was to try to preserve parts of this vital defense company in the event of a
thermonuclear conflagration. Yet the Gyroscope division remained headquartered on New York -- in its massive
Lake Success, Long Island plant (which also served as
United Nations headquarters before 1952) -- into the 1980s.
Sperry Rand
In
1955 Sperry acquired
Remington Rand and renamed itself
Sperry Rand. Acquiring then
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.
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. In the 1970s, Sperry Corporation was an old-school 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), farm equipment (Sperry New Holland), avionics (for example gyroscopes, radars, Air Route Traffic Control equipment) (Sperry Vickers/Sperry Aerospace), and consumer products (electric razors) (Sperry Remington.) In addition, Sperry Systems Management (headquartered near New York City with an office at
Long Island MacArthur Airport) did a fair amount of government defense contracting. Sperry bought out and continued the RCA line of electronic digital computers: architectural cousins to the IBM
System/360.
Merger
In
1986, after the success of a second
hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs' CEO and ex-Treasurer of the U.S.,
Michael Blumenthal, and approved by then-President
Ronald Reagan, Sperry Corporation merged with
Burroughs Corporation to become
Unisys. The takeover came about even after Sperry Rand used a "
poison pill" in the form of a major share price hike to dissuade the hostile bid, as a result of which Burroughs had to borrow much more from the banks than was anticipated in order to complete the bid.
Certain internal divisions of Sperry such as Sperry New Holland, Sperry Vickers, and Sperry Marine were sold off after the merger. Also sold years later, to Honeywell, were Sperry Defense Systems and Sperry Flight Systems -- the two units whose functions were originally at the heart of the venerable Sperry Gyroscope division.
The name Sperry lives on in the company Sperry Marine, headquartered in
Charlottesville, Virginia. 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.
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