Elisha Gray

• Born: August 2, 1835
• Birthplace: Barnesville, Ohio
• Died: January 21, 1901
• Place of death: Newtonville, Massachusetts

American engineer

Gray was one of several people involved with the invention of the telephone. Because he filed a patent for the telephone on the same day as Alexander Graham Bell, there is no sure way to determine who had precedence and therefore who invented the telephone.

Primary fields: Communications; electronics and electrical engineering

Primary invention: Telephone

Early Life

Elisha Gray was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, nor did he come from a line of engineers or scientists for whom inventing was second nature. He was, in fact, a farm boy who was also employed as a carpenter. Nevertheless, he understood that only through education could he achieve a life of value. Gray was born in Barnesville, Ohio, on August 2, 1835. His parents, David and Christiana Edgerton Gray, had moved there from western Pennsylvania and established a modest farm. Elisha attended grade school until his father died, when he had no alternative but to leave school and assist his widowed mother. Not long thereafter, she remarried to Cozens Smith, a Quaker farmer who lived in East Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where the family moved.

Gray was apprenticed to a blacksmith, then a carpenter. Unsatisfied with his work, he enrolled in a high school whose principal was L. F. Parker, a recent arrival from Oberlin, Ohio. Gray worked early in the morning and late in the evening at his carpenter’s job, attending school in midday. In 1856, he graduated from high school and enrolled in Oberlin College. Although he never graduated from Oberlin, he taught electricity and science there and built laboratory equipment for the science departments.

Life’s Work

Gray is most often identified with an invention for which he did not receive a patent—the telephone. That patent was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell. However, there is debate as to who truly invented the device, and to this day there is no way to determine the details of the events of February 14, 1876, when both men filed for their patents. There were many lawsuits regarding the matter, all of which Bell won. (At one time, Gray congratulated Bell on the invention itself, leading some people to conclude that Bell had invented the telephone.) On that February day, Bell filed a patent entitled “Improvements in Telegraphy,” while Gray filed a caveat (an abbreviated patent) for a device “for transmitting vocal sounds telegraphically.” In all the discussions, arguments, and court battles that took place in the ensuing years, little differentiation was made between the two inventions.

Unlike a patent, which included drawings, description, and claims, a caveat included only drawings and description. The caveat was much less expensive to file and essentially stated that the filer had invented a particular device. If at some later date another similar invention appeared, the filer of the caveat had three months to take further action. At that time, actual dates of invention and practice could be compared. Because the patent and the caveat served essentially the same purpose, the question that arose in the Bell-Gray controversy was who had filed first.

The filing fee for Gray’s caveat was entered on the cash blotter hours after Bell’s filing fee; this evidence quite logically suggested that Bell was first. However, there were indications that the various filings that day were put in the in-box in sequential order and that the recording of the events was handled hours later. If this was the case, then Gray’s application was at the bottom of the in-box (first in, last out) and would mean that Gray preceded Bell. In addition, Gray was slow in taking any action to challenge Bell’s patent. This was likely due to opposition by Dr. Samuel S. White, Gray’s financial benefactor, to any work on the telephone. In late 1877, Gray applied for a patent for the same invention. This action put him in interference with Bell’s patent. The patent examiner held that “while Gray was undoubtedly the first to conceive of and disclose the [variable resistance] invention, as in his caveat of February 14, 1876, his failure to take any action amounting to completion until others had demonstrated the utility of the invention deprives him of the right to have it considered.”

Gray’s work on the telephone, though by far his most interesting effort, was not his only achievement. He was the recipient of more than seventy patents, most of which dealt with telegraphy. His first invention was a self-adjusting telegraph relay—a device that compensated for the electrical characteristics of different transmission lines. He received a patent for this device in 1867, nine years before the telephone patent controversy. An invention of particular note was the “telautograph,” a device that proved to be the predecessor of the fax machine. It was designed to remotely transmit handwriting through telegraph systems. Several patents pertaining to it were awarded to Gray. His effort resulted in the formation of the Gray National Telautograph Company in 1888; the company continued in business as the Telautograph Corporation until 1994, when it merged with a company that manufactured fax machines. Yet another invention was a primitive television system called the “telephote.” It used an array of selenium cells focused on a picture. Signals from these cells would be transmitted to a distant station on separate wires, and at the receiving end the signals would open or close a shutter to re-create the image.

Gray’s corporate involvements also deserve note. For some years, Gray had been using a small shop in Cleveland for parts and models for his numerous experiments. He was so impressed with the work of the shop that he and his partner Enos Barton bought the company and labeled it Gray and Barton. Much of the work done by the organization was for Western Union, which invested in the manufacturing enterprise in 1872. Gray and Barton’s company reorganized as Western Electric Manufacturing Company. In 1881, Western Electric joined the Bell System (named for the aforementioned inventor) after Bell purchased a controlling interest in its stock, and in 1882 Western Electric became Bell’s exclusive manufacturer of telephone equipment in the United States. Thus, Elisha Gray became one of the founders of the Bell System’s manufacturing facility—Western Electric.

In 1899, Gray moved to Boston, and on January 21, 1901, he died from a heart attack in Newtonville, Massachusetts. He is buried in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery.

Impact

The telephone invented by Gray was based on the variable-resistance principle—a theory that led to practical, commercial development of the invention. By the end of 1880, there were nearly fifty thousand telephones in the United States. These were connected to each other through what are today called “central offices.” The first of these central offices, housing a huge switchboard, was established in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878—two years after the invention of the telephone. These were manual switchboards controlled by operators who connected one telephone to another using a series of plugs and cords. This process was automated in 1891 by an undertaker, Almon Brown Strowger. The telephone network of today is ubiquitous, and it has grown from a wire-line network to a wireless network that carries voice, data, and video. It is able to connect people everywhere and is truly distance-independent.

Just as the telephone invented by Elisha Gray was an immensely important invention, so too was the commercial enterprise that capitalized on it—Western Electric. This company became the manufacturing facility of the largest telecommunications organization in the country—the Bell System.

Bibliography

Bigelow, Stephen, Joseph Carr, and Steve Winder. Understanding Telephone Electronics. 4th ed. Boston: Newnes, 2001. Discusses the trends and advances of the telecommunications field, with chapters on fiber optics, the Internet, and wireless communications.

Brooks, John. Telephone: The First Hundred Years. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. This seminal book on the early days of the telephone was commissioned by the Bell System and therefore is somewhat biased. It mentions, but does not emphasize, the role played by the independent telephone companies in the United States. An important book for the student of the telecommunications industry.

Evenson, A. Edward. The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000. A detailed analysis that challenges the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell.

Pleasance, Charles A. The Spirit of Independent Telephony. Johnson City, Tenn.: Independent Telephone Books, 1989. Emphasizes the independent telephone industry, discussing not only the inventions and technical developments of the industry but also the strategy employed by the players—both Bell and others.