Safe Trip
Flying 73 years, Spencer Kellog has never had an accident; his inventions make your flights safer as well.
By the time he graduated from Cornell in 1937 Spencer Kellogg had clocked a lot of hours at the old Ithaca airport, located where Cass Park is today. “I was flying, teaching flying, taking passengers sight-seeing, aerial mapping—having fun!” Kellogg learned to fly at age 17, and by his senior year regularly flew his own plane back and forth to Cornell from his native Buffalo. “It was an Aeronca,” Kellogg remembers. “It had two cylinders, a 36-horsepower engine, and no brakes. In learning to fly, I remember the main difficulty I had was keeping it straight on the ground. I thought I’d never learn how to do that.” His plane was equipped with wheels in the winter and floats in the summer, so he could land right on Cayuga Lake.
In September 2004 Kellogg received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot award at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island, near his home in Old Brookville. “I was delighted,” he says of this honor, with his characteristic humor. “I suppose a lot of people deserved it, but I won.” To qualify, a candidate must have 50 consecutive years of flight and be nominated by three pilots. With 73 years of flying, Kellogg easily fulfilled the requirements. But it is his achievements in aeronautical design that have won him international acclaim: Kellogg is responsible for inventing some of the navigational tools that all airplanes use today.
From 1937 to 1968, Kellogg worked for the Sperry Gyroscope Company, where he eventually rose to become assistant chief engineer. During those years he invented the flight director, which is the blueprint for the auto pilot tools used in all modern airplanes. Kellogg also redesigned the gyrosyn compass. “Gyros used to slowly drift off,” Kellogg explains. “Me and my crew hooked our gyro up to a sensor you put out on the wing, where it sensed the electromagnetic field and that set the gyro right.” Another invention was the non-tumbling vertical gyro. “The best existing gyro had limits of 110 degrees bank and 60 degrees climb. We made an instrument you could do acrobatics with and they wouldn’t upset it. Altogether I have 16 patents,” says Kellogg, “and I got paid $10 for each one.”
Martin J. Ingram, the FAA’s assistant division manager of flight standards, Eastern region, who presented the Master Pilot award, was immediately impressed with Kellogg’s combined engineering experience and impeccable flying record. “In the embryonic days, there were none of the sophisticated training programs we have now. Someone walking in with Kellogg’s skill set—an engineering background plus an intuitive knowledge of how planes work—was unusual. In over 70 years he never had an accident or a violation; his background certainly contributed to his ability as a pilot.”
Kellogg’s undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering represents the entirety of academic training with which he started his career. (After leaving Sperry in 1968, Kellogg earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering.) “Cornell didn’t have a full aeronautical course back then,” he remembers, “so I took a couple of classes about automobiles. I was on my own after that, with books.”
And, of course, with planes. By his son Richard’s estimate, Kellogg has flown across the Continental Divide in the plane he presently owns more than 50 times. “Flying is very satisfying,” says the elder Kellogg. “There are beautiful cloud formations and land. I guess the most exciting time I ever had was flying to Europe in 1965. We were vacationing in France, and it was great seeing all the chateaux from the air. On the way back, I stopped in England, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, and Canada.” His scariest experience flying? “Sometimes there were thunderstorms. I had to dodge around.”
Then there was the time he was called in to check on a Lockheed belonging to Howard Hughes. “He was getting ready to go on his famous flight [around the world] from Floyd Bennett Field to Floyd Bennett Field, and his plane had a Sperry automatic pilot. I flew with him a couple of times. We spent an hour in his office talking about the vertical gyro; I thought he was a good engineer. And he was a good pilot.”
Kellogg’s wife, Mary Louise, didn’t want to learn to fly (although, Kellogg says, “she did make delicious meals for our flights!”), but all of their five children took flying lessons as soon as they were able. “The twins went to boarding school,” says Richard Kellogg, “and Mimi used to fly from her school in Long Island to David’s school in Massachusetts—she’d ride her bike to the airport.”
Richard continues, “My dad has a huge command of engineering, but he could always explain things in simple, everyday terms. He’s also a great lesson in how to grow old. His attitude was always, ‘I can do this.’ A few years ago, Marshall Hoke ’39, one of his friends from Cornell, called up and said “Why don’t you come visit me in New Hampshire?’ And Dad did—he landed on the ice outside the guy’s house.”
—Melanie Bush
