The inventor of the Autopilot was George DeBeeson who collaborated with Sperry to create a Robot. Poor old George stayed just that "poor", Sperry got the better of him in the Project Management stakes.
This was late '20's when the phonetic alphabet included George, perhaps handing control to Gyroscopes meant giving it to "George".
My 2 sens worth
p.s. check on Google, there's plenty of info