Elisha Gray

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Elisha Gray
Born
August 2, 1835 Barnesville, Ohio

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 an announcement to the patent office, but it turned out to be just two hours after Alexander Graham Bell did. After two years of litigation, Bell was awarded rights to the invention, and as a result, Bell is credited as the inventor.

This however is the source of much dispute as the were rumors of poor ethics among patent workers and Bell. One such rumor states that Bell was allowed to compare his and Gray's patents and on doing so added a handwritten note proposing an alternate design identical to Gray's as oposed to his typed design which did not work as well.

The first true electronic musical 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.

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