AERONAUTICS: Gyroscopic Stabilizer

From Ohio over the stormy Alleghenies to the District of Columbia, then to Long Island, a heavy trimotored Ford plane flew last week. Except at take-offs and landings the pilot scarcely ever touched the controls. A new device, a gyroscopic stabilizer similar to the stabilizers which help keep ships from rolling, kept the Ford on even keel through wind and fog. When gusts twisted the plane from its course, the stabilizer returned it automatically.

The gyroscopic airplane stabilizer consists of two wheels rotating, one vertically, the other horizontally. A wind-driven electric motor gives them energy. If the airplane tilts up, down or sideways, it in effect moves around the stabilizer. When it does so, it makes electrical contacts which act through electromagnets to return the machine to level keel and original direction, by mechanically activating the ailerons, rudder and elevator, all together or separately.

Last week when Elmer Ambrose Sperry Jr., who with his father, Elmer Ambrose Sperry, developed and perfected the stabilizer, brought the Ford to Long Island with three companions, the stabilizer had guided the ship for nearly 60 trial hours. It seemed such a reliable instrument, so useful in relieving the pilot from constant attention to controls, so much more quick and accurate than a sleepy pilot in moving the controls, that Secretary of War Good permitted the War Department to award it one of its rare encomiums: “The auto-matic pilot has arrived. . . .”