Elmer A. Sperry

Elmer Ambrose Sperry was an American inventor and entrepreneur who built his early career in electrical engineering before becoming known for the gyroscope. He grew interested in dynamos while briefly attending Cornell University in 1878 and 1879, then moved to Chicago in 1880 and founded the Sperry Electric Company to develop arc lighting and dynamo equipment. In 1887 he devised a system for bringing electric power safely into coal mines, using heated copper wires to resist the corrosion that mine air caused, followed it the next year with the Sperry Electric Machinery Mining Company to sell the equipment, and in 1890 formed the Sperry Electric Railway Company to build electric trolley systems for hilly cities in Ohio and Pennsylvania. His electrical work also led him into batteries and automobiles: he patented ideas later used in portable lead-acid batteries, built an electric automobile of his own design, and in 1896 drove it in Paris, making it the first American-built car to appear there. Around 1900 he turned briefly to electrochemistry, opening a Washington, D.C. laboratory that developed processes for manufacturing pure caustic soda and recovering tin from scrap metal.