Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs Corporation, which merged the combined operation under the new name Unisys.

The company is best known as the developer of the artificial horizon and a wide variety of other gyroscope-based aviation instruments like autopilots, bombsights, analog ballistics computers and gyro gunsights.

[3] 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.

[7] The company prospered during World War II as military demand skyrocketed, ranking 19th among US corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.

At about the same time as the Remington Rand acquisition, Sperry Gyroscope decided to open a facility that would almost exclusively produce its marine instruments.

After considerable searching and evaluation, a plant was built in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in 1956, Sperry Piedmont Division began producing marine navigation products.

In January 1972, Sperry took over the RCA Spectra 70 line of electronic digital computers (architectural cousins to the IBM System/360).

In 1983, Sperry sold Vickers to Libbey Owens Ford (later to be renamed TRINOVA Corporation and subsequently Aeroquip-Vickers).

[15] The newly merged company was renamed Unisys Corporation— a portmanteau of "united", "information", and "systems," while also referencing Sperry's well-known previous UNIVAC computer branding.

Sperry in Britain started with a factory in Pimlico, London, in 1913, manufacturing gyroscopic compasses for the Royal Navy.

[25] The site of the Bracknell factory and development center (sold to British Aerospace in 1982) is commemorated by a 4.5-meter aluminum sculpture by Philip Bentham, Sperry's New Symbolic Gyroscope (1967).