Autopilot reducing the pilot's workload. Lawrence Sperry (the son of famous inventor Elmer Sperry) demonstrated it in 1914 at an aviation safety contest held in Paris. At the contest, Sperry demonstrated the credibility of the invention by flying the aircraft with his hands away from the controls and visible to onlookers of the contest. Elmer Sperry Jr., the son of Lawrence Sperry, and Capt Shiras continued work after the war on the same autopilot, and in 1930 they tested a more compact and reliable autopilot which kept a US Army Air Corps aircraft on a true heading and altitude for three
James Warner (aviator) James Warner (aviator) James Warner (1891–1970) was the radio operator on the aircraft "Southern Cross" piloted by Charles Kingsford Smith for the first trans-Pacific flight in 1928, during which radio was first used successfully on a long distance flight. Warner was born near Lawrence, Kansas, in 1891. His parents divorced during his early childhood. His mother cared for his two sisters but their father took James and his two brothers to an orphanage in Wichita and left them there. At the age of five he was adopted by a German family named Oswald and spent most of the rest of