Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) invented the telephone in his laboratory in Highland Park, Illinois, independently of Alexander Graham Bell.

Born into a Quaker family in Barnesville, Ohio, Gray was brought up on a farm. He spent two years at Oberlin College where he worked with electricity. In 1867 he received a patent for an improved telegraph relay and he went on to receive patents in over 70 other inventions.

In 1872, Gray founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. In 1874, he retired and did independent research and taught at Oberlin.

Gray was a charter member of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church (which still exists) and gave the first public demonstration of his invention in its sanctuary in 1874. On February 14, 1876, he submitted a "caveat" (announcement of intent to patent) just two hours after Alexander Graham Bell filed his own patent application. The caveat allowed an inventor to delay filing the more expensive application, while still establishing priority of invention. If a patent application for the same invention was later filed by a different person, the patent office would contact the first person and allow him or her to file a substitute application. Bell had filed earlier, but Gray challenged Bell's patent anyway, and after two years of litigation, Bell was awarded rights to the invention, and as a result, Bell is credited as the inventor.

Bell's patent was still disputed because there had been rumors of a Bell confidant in the patent office. One such rumor states that Bell was allowed to compare his and Gray's patents and on doing so added a handwritten margin note proposing an alternate design identical to Gray's as opposed to his typed design which would not have worked.

The first electric music synthesizer was invented by Elisha Gray in 1876. He accidentally discovered that he could control sound from a self vibrating electromagnetic circuit and in doing so invented a basic single note oscillator. The "Musical Telegraph" used steel reeds whose oscillations were created and transmitted, over a telephone line, by electromagnets. Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device in later models consisting of a vibrating diaphragm in a magnetic field to make the oscillator audible.

In the 1880s Gray worked on developing the "telautograph", a device that could remotely transmit handwriting through telegraph systems.

External links

• Elisha Gray biography from Oberlin
• Gray's caveat filed on February 14, 1876 shortly after Bell's application
• Gray's "Musical Telegraph" of 1876
• Gray's "Harmonic Multiple Telegraph"
• Bell-Gray conflict over the harmonic telegraph
• "Telautograph" description

Patents

• Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones, issued July 1875
• Improvement in Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones, issued July 1875
• Art of Telegraphy, issued July 1888 (writing telegraph or telautograph)
• Telautograph, issued July 1888
• Telautograph, issued October 1891
• Art of and Apparatus for Telautographic Communication, issued October 1891 (improved speed and accuracy)
• Telautograph, issued February 1893
• Telautograph, issued April 1893

1835 births | 1901 deaths | American inventors | People from Ohio | Telecommunications history | Oberlin College alumni

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