The two grandstands between Pont Bezons and Pont Argenteuil were packed with spectators, on hand to see the Concours de la Securité en Aéroplane (Airplane Safety Competition) being held on the banks of the Seine River. On that glorious sunny June 18, 1914, there were 57 specially equipped planes competing, with Lawrence Sperry listed last on the program. Entries featured such improvements in aircraft technology as magnetos, self-starters, carburetors and other innovations. Sperry’s entry was the sole participant equipped with a gyroscopic stabilizer apparatus, designed to improve stability and control.
Sperry’s device was mounted on a single-engine Curtiss C-2 biplane with a hydroplane fuselage. Flying with Sperry was his newly hired French mechanic and assistant, Emil Cachin. Considering that Sperry spoke almost no French and Cachin was equally ignorant of English, they seemed an unlikely team — but they had hit it off with each other from the start. Sperry and Cachin had managed to become sufficiently conversant with each other’s language to bandy about phrases such as stabilisateur gyroscopique and generator electrique with true Gallic flair. Now their opportunity to demonstrate the feasibility of the Sperry gyroscopic stabilizer was at hand.
Lawrence’s father, Elmer A. Sperry, a renowned American inventor, accompanied by his wife, Zula, was on hand to see the results, along with the members of the Ligue Nationale Aérienne de France. With the rest of the hushed crowd, they waited to see if what was generally thought to be an impractical gadget might actually work in an airplane.
The elder Sperry had earned a worldwide reputation for his development of the gyrocompass, which had been installed on more than 30 American warships. A massive device that was practical only for marine use at that time, his invention was still gaining in popularity and becoming standard equipment on vessels then entering service. The gyrocompass was immune from deviation and variation problems, which hitherto had been difficult to overcome, particularly in large steel warships. The massive compensating devices required by conventional magnetic compasses were eliminated by Sperry’s breakthrough. Since then his son, Lawrence, had developed a lightweight adaptation of the gyroscope that could be coupled to control surfaces to maintain the flight axes of aircraft.
The firemen’s band of the villages of Bezons and Argenteuil, spotting the aircraft of ‘l’Americain’ approaching, bravely struck up ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ The Curtiss C-2 flew down the river, and directly in front of the judge’s stand Sperry engaged his stabilizer device, disentangled himself from the shoulder yoke that controlled the C-2′s ailerons and passed in review with both his arms held high. The aircraft continued on a straight and steady course, with the pilot obviously not handling the controls. The crowd was on its feet, cheering, and shouting: ‘Remarquable!’ ‘Extraordinaire!’ and ‘Formidable!’ Sperry had stunned the skeptics with his ‘no hands’ flying.
But Sperry wanted to show them what else his device was capable of. During the second pass, Cachin climbed out on the starboard wing and moved about 7 feet away from the fuselage. Sperry’s hands were still off the controls. As Cachin moved out on the wing, the aircraft momentarily banked due to the shift of weight, but the gyroscope-equipped stabilizer immediately took over and corrected the attitudinal change, after which the Curtiss continued smoothly down the river. This time the crowd was unrestrained in its appreciation and the firemen’s band delivered its supreme compliment — a vigorous rendition of ‘La Marseillaise.’
Sperry elected to make one more pass — his tour de force. As they passed the reviewing stand, there was Cachin on one wing and Sperry on the other, with the pilot’s seat empty. This was a demonstration beyond the already exuberant audience’s expectations. There was the aircraft, flying serenely along with both its pilot and mechanic out on the wings, airily waving to the spectators. The judge, René Quinton, was almost speechless. His comment mirrored the feelings of the crowd: ‘Mais, c’est inoui!’ (‘But that’s unheard of!’).
L’articolo qui sopra, a firma di William Scheck, e’ tratto da HistoryNet.com. La figura ritratta e’ quella di Lawrence Sperry, pioniere dell’aeronautica autonoma ed inventore di altissimo livello, purtroppo non ricordato a sufficienza dalla storia.
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