Exhibitions: Centennial Celebration of the American Patent System: Basic Inventions of the Sperry Gyroscope Co.

Date unknown, approximately 1936: In connection with National Patent Week, November 23 — 30, the Brooklyn Museum installed today, Tuesday, November 24, in the Main Entrance Hall a collection of instruments for navigating airplanes and of special photographs. The collection includes Amelia Earhart’s Sperry Directional Gyro, used on solo Atlantic flight Harbor Brace, Newfoundland to Londonderry, May 20-21, 1932 and also on solo Pacific flight Wheeler Field, Honolulu to Oakland, California, January 11-12, 1935; two aereonautica1 instruments, the Sperry Gyro-Horizon and the Directional Gyro showing their development from 1918 to the present. With the help of these two inventions the transport pilot is now able to fly above bad weather or at night and keep a true course. All the great Clipper Ships are equipped with them, as well as all mail and transport planes. The Gyro-Horizon indicates whether the plane is banking, climbing or gliding, or whether it is flying level and gives the pilot a substitute for a normal visual picture of his airplane in whatever lateral or longitudinal attitude he places it. With the Directional Gyro the airplane pilot can steer accurately on any given heading, even in rough air, and make precise turns. With greater precision in flying the importance of aerial photography has steadily increased. Aerial maps of large areas such as a small photograph showing Manhattan and parts of New Jersey and Long Island can be used for such purposes as geodetical surveys and tax assessments on the buildings and improvements noted. Such pictures as the views of Manhattan taken from above the clouds have opened up a new field in art photography.

This exhibition will run through November 29.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 144. View Original