His family had been in what is now the Northeastern United States since the 1600s, and his earliest American ancestor was an English colonist named Richard Sperry (born 1606).

In 1887, Sperry created a system to bring electricity into coal mines, heating the copper wires to prevent corrosion.

[6] This system allowed him to bring self-designed mining equipment deep below the surface, to greatly increase the production of coal.

After successful tests, Sperry's gyrocompass was soon being installed on American, British, French, Italian, and Russian naval crafts.

[6] During World War I, the importance of the gyrocompass increased as the compass was adapted to control the steering of a ship to automatically hold a steady line.

[6] Sperry successfully implemented his gyrostablizer technology, formerly thought to be only applicable to large ships, because of their high weight, into aircraft.

[6] In 1916, Sperry joined Peter Hewitt to develop the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane, one of the first successful precursors of the UAV.

[9] During World War I he worked to create a "flying bomb", and on March 6, 1918, he guided an aerial torpedo for more than half a mile using radio control.

[10] Working with the US Navy, Sperry developed a system to control the entire battery of a battleship from an interior room of the ship.

[6] This control system used his gyroscopic equipment to correct an individual gun's position based on changes in course of the ship, allowing the entire battery to focused on one point.

[3] Sperry died at St. John Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, on June 16, 1930, from complications following the removal of gallstones six weeks earlier.