Object Details
- Physical Description
- 1.5 inches diameter, 3.5 inches long; gray metal; streamlined, strut mount.
- Summary
- Elmer Sperry developed the Stallemometer as a follow-on component to the first successful aircraft autopilot, demonstrated by Sperry in 1914. The Stallemometer detected a stall flutter and then function as a switch to drop the nose by twenty degrees through the autopilot until a stall recovery occurred. A light provided a further warning that the stall had occurred and a recovery was underway. Like the autopilot itself, the Stallemometer was not seen by aviators as a desirable innovation due to cost, weight, complexity and its subsuming of pilot control over the flight. Such systems did enjoy a resurgance fifty years later as increasing levels of autopilot autonomy became standard on larger transport aircraft.
- Data Source
- National Air and Space Museum
- Manufacturer
- The Sperry Gyroscope Co.
- Date
- 1915
- Credit Line
- Gift of the Sperry Gyroscope Company
- Materials
- Copper Alloys
- Non-Magnetic Metal Alloy
- Glass
- Natural Fabric
- Dimensions
- Approximate (grey object): 5.1 × 59.7 × 8.3cm (2 × 23 1/2 × 3 1/4 in.)
- Approximate (black object): 7 × 4.4 × 14cm (2 3/4 × 1 3/4 × 5 1/2 in.)
- Type
- AVIONICS-Autopilots
