Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane for eight years, and yet Sperry became intrigued with the concept of applying radio control to them. He realized that for radio control to be effective, automatic stabilization would be essential, so he decided to adapt his naval gyro-stabilizers (which he had developed for destroyers). In 1913, the Navy provided a flying boat to test and evaluate the gyro-based autopilot. Sperry's son Lawrence served as an engineer during the test phase. In 1914, Lawrence Sperry was in Europe and observed the developing techniques of aerial warfare, including the use of aircraft. In 1916, the two Sperrys joined Peter Hewitt, an
Pauline Sperry Under the guidance of Ernest Julius Wilczynski, her doctoral thesis, "Properties of a certain projectively defined two-parameter family of curves on a general surface", drew on his work as the founder of the American school of projective differential geometry. She earned her PhD in mathematics and astronomy in 1916 and was elected to the Sigma Xi honor society. After a year teaching again at Smith, Sperry spent the rest of her academic career at the University of California at Berkeley, beginning in 1917. In 1923, she became the first female assistant professor in the mathematics department at the university. Her