In this historical photo, a Nassau County Deputy Sheriff tickets Lawrence Sperry after landing plane in street. The date of the photo is January 1922.
According to the Cradle of Aviation museum, the plane was originally designed in 1920 at McCook Field to replace motorcycles as light message carriers for the U.S. Army, the Messenger was built by the Lawrence Sperry Aircraft Company on Long Island. Lawrence Sperry, son of inventor Elmer Sperry, used the prototype for various demonstrations, including landing on the Capitol’s plaza and conducting early airship hookup experiments. Tragically, in 1923, Sperry drowned after making a forced landing in the English Channel. There is a a meticulously crafted full-scale replica of the 1922 Sperry Messenger in the Cradle of Aviation Museum exhibit space, built by museum volunteers using original plans. Equipped with an original Lawrance engine, the plane is actually flyable.
Photo: See page for author, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Lawrence Sperry in a Messenger taking off from Washington Ave.near his Garden City home, Nassau County Police in pursuit.
Photo: Cradle of Aviation Museum, Garden City, NY.
