Gray, Elisha

SUBJECT AREA: Telecommunications

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b. 2 August 1835 Barnesville, Ohio, USA

d. 21 January 1901 Newtonville, Massachusetts, USA

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American inventor who was only just beaten by Alexander Graham Bell in the race for the first telephone patent.

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Initially apprenticed to a carpenter, Gray soon showed an interest in chemistry, but he eventually studied electrical engineering at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, in the late 1850s. In 1869 he founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company, where he devised an electric-needle annunciator for use in hotels and lifts and carried out experimental work aimed at the development of a means of distant-speech communication. After successful realization of a liquid-based microphone and public demonstrations of a receiver using a metal diaphragm, on 14 February 1876 he deposited a caveat of intention to file a patent claim within three months for the invention of the telephone, only to learn that Alexander Graham Bell had filed a full patent claim only three hours earlier on the same day. Following litigation, the patent was eventually awarded to Bell. In 1880 Gray was appointed Professor of Dynamic Electricity at Oberlin College, but he appears to have retained his business interests since in 1891 he was both a member of the firm of Gray and Barton and electrician to his old firm, Western Electric. Subsequently, in 1895, he invented the TelAutograph, a form of remote-writing telegraph, or facsimile, capable of operating over short distances. The system used a transmitter in which the x and y movements of a writing stylus were coupled to a pair of variable resistors. In turn, these were connected by two telegraph wires to a pair of receiving coils, which were used to control the position of a pen on a sheet of paper, thus replicating the movement of the original stylus.

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Bibliography

1878, Experimental Research in Electro-Harmonic Telegraph and Telephony, 1867–76.

Further Reading

J.Munro, 1891, Heroes of the Telegraph.

D.A.Hounshill, 1975, "Elisha Gray and the telephone. On the disadvantage of being an expert", Technology and Culture 16:133.

—1976, "Bell and Gray. Contrast in style, politics and etiquette", Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 64:1,305.

International Telecommunications Union, 1965, From Semaphore to Satellite, Geneva.

KF