Elisha Gray was an American electrical engineer and co-founder of what became the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. He filed a patent caveat describing a telephone-like device on February 14, 1876, the same day Alexander Graham Bell's own telephone patent application reached the United States Patent Office, a coincidence that made him Bell's principal rival in the resulting decades of litigation over who invented the telephone first.
Facts
FAQs
Did Elisha Gray invent anything besides his telephone design?
Yes, more than ninety patents, including the teleautograph and the musical telegraph.
Yes. Gray received more than ninety patents in his lifetime, starting with a self-adjusting telegraph in 1865. In 1870 he invented a needle annunciator for hotels and elevators and a microphone printer. He also built a musical telegraph, one of the world's first electrical musical instruments, and in 1887 he invented the teleautograph, a device that sent handwriting over telegraph wires.
Connections
Associated With
Filed a competing telephone patent caveat on the same day as Bell.
In Field
Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
Held Differently
The Telephone, Inventions Why this is disputed. Gray's February 14, 1876 caveat described a similar voice-transmission method filed the same day as Bell's application; the United States Patent Office and later courts upheld Bell's patent, but the question of who reached the idea first has never been settled to universal satisfaction.
Source Technology: A World HistoryDaniel R. Headrick
In the Other Atlases
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954View the Source Technology: A World History
Elisha Gray (Wikipedia)
In Group: Telecommunications and Radio Engineers, lead paragraph: telecom/radio/television invention or advance stated in own articleView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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