Elisha Gray

Elisha Gray

Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineer. He helped start the Western Electric Manufacturing Company.

Gray is best known for making a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. Some people think Gray should be called the true inventor of the telephone because of claims that another inventor used his idea. But the official decision went to the other inventor's patent.

Besides his work on the telephone, Gray also did important work in music technology. He is often called the father of the modern music synthesizer. During his career, Gray got over 70 patents for his many inventions. His work helped change both communication and music technology.

Biography and early inventions

Elisha Gray was born in Barnesville, Ohio, the son of Christiana (Edgerton) and David Gray. His family were Quakers. He grew up on a farm and spent time at Oberlin College, where he tried experiments with electrical devices. He did not finish his studies, but he taught electricity and science there and made lab tools for the science departments.

In 1865, Gray made a self-adjusting telegraph relay that changed with the line. In 1867, he got a patent for this invention. In 1869, Gray and his partner Enos M. Barton started Gray & Barton Co. in Cleveland, Ohio, to make telegraph tools for the Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1872, Western Union bought part of Gray and Barton Co. and renamed it to Western Electric Manufacturing Company of Chicago. Gray kept making new things for Western Electric.

Gray made many helpful inventions, like a needle announcer for hotels and elevators, and a stock-ticker-printer. In 1874, he stopped working for the company to do his own research. He showed his invention for sending musical tones to the public on December 29, 1874. In 1888, Gray got a patent for the telautograph, an early kind of the modern fax machine.

Telephone

Elisha Gray worked on a way to send voice sounds. Because of some problems, he didn’t share his idea until February 11, 1876. On that day, he made a drawing of his invention. Gray asked his lawyer, William D. Baldwin, to prepare something called a "caveat" to protect his idea at the US Patent Office. A caveat was like a temporary patent with drawings and a description.

On Monday, February 14, 1876, Gray signed and got his caveat notarized. His lawyer then sent it to the US Patent Office that same morning. That very same morning, a lawyer for Alexander Graham Bell sent Bell’s patent application to the Patent Office. It is not known which one arrived first, but Gray thought his caveat came a few hours before Bell’s application. Bell’s lawyers had been waiting to file the application in the USA until it was filed in Britain first.

Later, the patent examiner noticed that Bell’s application included an idea that matched Gray’s caveat. This caused a delay while they checked the details. In the end, Bell’s application was approved, and he received the patent on March 7, 1876. Bell and his assistant, Watson, tested a liquid transmitter and successfully sent clear speech. Although some people thought Bell took Gray’s idea, records show Bell had been working with liquid transmitters for years before this. Gray later tried to get a patent for the same invention, but the Patent Office decided Bell should keep the credit for the invention.

Further inventions and death

In 1887, Gray invented the telautograph, a device that could send handwriting over wires from far away. Banks used it to sign documents, and the military used it to send messages. Train stations also used it for changing schedules.

Gray showed his invention at the 1893 Columbian Exposition and later sold his share in the company. He also helped lead a big meeting of scientists called the International Congress of Electricians that same year.

In 1899, Gray moved to Boston and kept inventing. He worked on a way to send messages underwater to ships.

Sadly, Gray passed away from a heart problem in Newtonville, Massachusetts in 1901.

Some people mistakenly think a type of computer code called the Gray code is named after him, but it is actually named after another scientist named Frank Gray.

Publications

Elisha Gray wrote several books about his work. One book, Experimental Researches in Electro-Harmonic Telegraphy and Telephony, 1867–1876, was published in 1878. He also wrote Telegraphy and Telephony that same year, and two more books in 1900: Electricity and Magnetism and Nature's Miracles. These books explained science in a way that everyone could understand.