In 1967 Honeywell sued Sperry Rand in an attempt to break their ENIAC patents, arguing the ABC constituted prior art.

The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota released its judgement on October 19, 1973, finding in Honeywell v. Sperry Rand that the ENIAC patent was a derivative of John Atanasoff's invention.

* Honeywell v. Sperry Rand Records, 1846-1973, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

The six computer manufacturers were Burroughs Corporation, IBM, Minneapolis-Honeywell ( Honeywell Labs ), RCA, Sperry Rand, and Sylvania Electric Products.

The ABC was largely forgotten until it became the focus of the lawsuit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, the ruling of which invalidated the ENIAC patent ( and several others ) as, among many reasons, having been anticipated by Atanasoff's work.

RCA was one of several major computer companies ( see also: Computing ) that also included IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, Burroughs, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR and Sperry Rand through most of the 1960s.

Sperry Rand officially took over the RCA base in January 1972.

* November 11 – Sperry Rand and Burroughs merge to form Unisys, becoming the second largest computer company.

Rand soon merged with Sperry Corporation to become Sperry Rand.

Groves went on to become a vice-president at Sperry Rand.

Groves went on to become a vice president at Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm.

He retired from Sperry Rand in 1961.

For a variety of reasons ( including Mauchly's June 1941 examination of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry ), US patent 3, 120, 606 for ENIAC, granted in 1964, was voided by the 1973 decision of the landmark federal court case Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, putting the invention of the electronic digital computer in the public domain and providing legal recognition to Atanasoff as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer.

However, in 1955 Remington merged with Sperry Corporation to become Sperry Rand.

* Sperry Rand Corporation ( 1957 ) Introducing a New Language for Automatic Programming: Univac Flow-Matic

Atansoff invented the first digital computer in the world during the 1930s in the Iowa State College, but it took a lengthy court battle for achieving legal patent to 1973 when the case of Honeywell v. Sperry Rand was solved and the verdict named Atansoff with the title the inventor of the computer, the decision was never appealed, thus giving him the legal right to be called as such in the United States.

: For a more detailed account, see Honeywell v. Sperry Rand.

Between 1954 and 1973, Atanasoff was a witness in the legal actions brought by various parties to invalidate electronic computing patents issued to John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, which were owned by computer manufacturer Sperry Rand.

In the 1973 decision of Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, a federal judge named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer.

Atanasoff agreed to assist the attorney, but IBM ultimately entered a patent-sharing agreement with Sperry Rand, the owners of the Eckert-Mauchly memory patent, and the case was dropped.

Atanasoff was deposed and testified at trial in the later action Honeywell v. Sperry Rand.

The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company and after the 1986 merger with Sperry Univac was renamed as Unisys.

CBI's Burroughs Corporation Records includes over 100, 000 photographs depicting the entire visual history of Burroughs from its origin as the American Arithmometer Corporation in 1886 to its merger with the Sperry Corporation to form the Unisys Corporation in 1986.

He was a founder of the American Arithmometer Company ( 1886 ), which later became the Burroughs Adding Machine Company ( 1904 ), then the Burroughs Corporation ( 1953 ) and in 1986, merged with Sperry Corporation to form Unisys.

* August 20 – Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ( d. 1994 )

* September 3 – Charles Stillman Sperry, American admiral ( d. 1911 )

The American Elmer Sperry followed with his own design later that year, and other nations soon realized the military importance of the invention — in an age in which naval prowess was the most significant measure of military power — and created their own gyroscope industries.

Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century.

Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation Company provided the rocket engines ; Ford Instrument Company, division of Sperry Rand Corporation, produced the guidance and control systems ; and Reynolds Metals Company fabricated fuselage assemblies as subcontractors to Chrysler.

The American innovation of the manned, ventrally-mounted Sperry ball turret on the B-17 and B-24 bombers was a virtually self-contained defensive weapon system that rotated a full 360 degrees horizontally with a 90-degree elevation, and its pair of M2 Browning machine guns had an effective range of one thousand yards.

Elmer Ambrose Sperry ( October 12, 1860 – June 16, 1930 ) was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous as co-inventor, with Herman Anschütz-Kaempfe of the gyrocompass.

* Armstrong Sperry ( 1897 – 1976 ), American author and illustrator

* Brett Sperry ( contemporary ), American video game designer

* Elmer Ambrose Sperry ( 1860 – 1930 ), American inventor and entrepreneur, founder of Sperry Gyroscope Company

* Joseph Evans Sperry ( 1854 – 1930 ), American architect

* Roger Wolcott Sperry ( 1913 – 1994 ), American neurobiologist and Nobel laureate

* Thomas Sperry ( c. 1864 – 1913 ), American businessman and co-founder of S & H Green Stamps

* Sperry Corporation, a former American equipment and electronics manufacturer ( 1910 – 1986 )

* The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry, an American film released in 2009

Crossfield received the Lawrence Sperry Award ( 1954 ), Octave Chanute Award ( 1954 ), Iven C. Kincheloe Award ( 1960 ), American Rocket Society ( ARS ) Astronautics Award ( 1960 ), Harmon International Trophy ( 1961 at the White House by President John F. Kennedy ), Collier Trophy ( 1961 at the White House by President Kennedy in 1962 ), NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal ( 1993 ), and was named Honorary Fellow by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ( AIAA ) ( 1999 ).

* Elmer Ambrose Sperry ( 1860 – 1930 ), prolific American inventor and entrepreneur

The Sperry section of Litton Marine Systems, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, was already producing its own line of marine radars, the Rascar, at the time of the acquisition but this was replaced by the BridgeMaster E. The Rascar had been the American-made radar of choice in the American Navy and Coast Guard but eventually the BridgeMaster E made inroads there as well.