Elmer A Sperry News

Navies, shipowners, shipyards, and organizations have offered the best of birthday wishes to Canada’s Thomson-Gordon Group, the parent company of water-lubricated polymer bearing pioneer Thordon Bearings, as it celebrates its 110th anniversary this fall.Among several well-wishers, Claude Tremblay, Directorate General Maritime Equipment Program Management National Defence, Royal Canadian Navy, wrote: “Congratulations to Thomson-Gordon Group for 110 years of Canadian innovation and pioneering. We are proud to rely on your top-quality products.

On October 31st, 2019, George A. (Sandy) Thomson, the founder of Thordon Bearings and a pioneer in the development of advanced polymer materials, was presented with the 2019 Elmer A. Sperry Award in recognition of “leading the innovation in water-lubricated propeller shaft bearings” in marine transportation through the use of polymeric compounds.The award was presented to Mr. Thomson at the SNAME Maritime Convention, in Tacoma, USA, by the Chairman of the Board of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST), Mr.

Thordon Bearings’ founder and polymer materials pioneer George A. (Sandy) Thomson has been awarded the global transportation sector’s most distinguished accolade, the Elmer A. Sperry Award 2019 for “Advancing the Art of Transportation”.Thomson joins a long list of Sperry Award recipients, which was established in 1955, including Donald Douglas, Ferdinand Porsche, Sir Geoffrey De Havilland, Christopher Cockerell, Leonard Hobbs, Perry Pratt, Josef Becker and Malcom McLean.“I am deeply honored and humbled to win this award…

Northrop Grumman Corporation recently presented the 2014 Elmer A. Sperry Junior Navigator of the Year Award for 2014 to Midshipman Robert Francisco Yerkes-Medina in ceremonies at the U.S. Naval Academy. The award recognizes a member of the graduating class who has demonstrated outstanding navigation skills and knowledge during his or her four years at the academy and is part of a naval support tradition at Northrop Grumman. This is the fifth year the company has sponsored the award.

The U.S. Navy, and the aeronautic field in general, has benefited enormously from the genius of more than one Sperry. Lawrence Burst Sperry, the second son and third child of gyrocompass inventor Elmer A. Sperry was a pioneer in instrumental flight and famous inventor in his own right, launching the Lawrence Sperry Aircraft Co. at 26, and earning 23 patents before his untimely death at the age of 31 in 1923. It was no exaggeration. Like his father before him, Sperry’s engineering brilliance more than made up for his lack of a college degree…

Elmer A. Sperry casts a long shadow over the history of modern naval, nautical and aeronautical technology, one few people know much about, but should, for a man crowned both the “father of modern navigational technology” and “the father of automatic feedback and control systems,” as well as a pioneer of rocket and missile technology. “It is safe to say that no one American has contributed so much to our naval technical progress,” eulogized Charles Francis Adams III, Secretary of the Navy from 1929-1933, on the death of engineering genius Elmer Ambrose Sperry, June 16, 1930, at 69.

Northrop Grumman Corporation recently donated $3 million worth of training software to the U.S. Naval Academy, and also presented the Elmer A. Sperry Junior Navigator of the Year Award to Midshipman First Class Tyler Ledoux. The company donated 100 licenses of its Voyage Management System (VMS) software to the U. S. Naval Academy Foundation for midshipmen training use at the Naval Academy. The VMS software incorporates the Electronic Chart Display and Information System-Navy (ECDIS-N) which was selected by the navigator of the Navy and is now a fleet standard.

Northrop Grumman Corporation presented the second annual Elmer A. Sperry Junior Navigator of the Year Award to Ensign Jeffrey Iiams, USNA Class of 2010, in honor of the midshipman who demonstrated outstanding navigation skills and knowledge during the four years of professional development at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. The Elmer A. Sperry Junior Navigator of the Year Award was established by the company to honor Elmer A. Sperry, founder of Sperry Marine (now part of Northrop Grumman) in 1910.