ELISHA

See also:

• GRAY
• GRAY (or GREY), WALTER DE (d. 1255)
• GRAY, ASA (1810-1888)
• GRAY, DAVID (1838-1861)
• ELISHA GRAY (1835-1901)
• GRAY, HENRY PETERS (1819-18/7)
• GRAY, HORACE (1828–1902)
• GRAY, JOHN DE (d. 1214)
• GRAY, JOHN EDWARD (1800–1875)
• GRAY, PATRICK GRAY, 6TH BARON (d. 1612)
• GRAY, ROBERT (1809-1872)
• GRAY, SIR THOMAS (d. c. 1369)
• GRAY, THOMAS (1716-1771)

GRAY (1835-1901)  , American electrician, was born in Barnesville, Belmont county, Ohio, on the 2nd of August 1835 . He worked as a carpenter and in a machine shop, reading in physical science at the same time, and for five years studied at Oberlin College, where he taught for a time . He then investigated the subject of telegraphy, and in 1867 patented a telegraphic switch and annunciator . Experimenting in the transmittal of electro-tones and of musical tones by wire, he utilized in 1874 animal tissues in his receivers, and filed, on the 14th of February 1876, a caveat for the invention of a telephone, only a few hours after the filing of an application for a patent by Alexander Graham Bell . (See TELEPHONE.) The caveat was disregarded; letters patent No.174,465 were granted to Bell, whose priority of invention was upheld in 1888 by the United States Supreme Court (see Molecular Telephone Co. v . American Bell Telephone Co., 126 U.S . I) . Gray's experiments won for him high praise and the decoration of the Legion of Honour at the Paris Exposition of 1878 . He was for a time a manufacturer of electrical apparatus, particularly of his own inventions; and was chief electrical expert of the Western Electric Company of Chicago . At the Columbian Exposition of 1893 Gray was chair-man of the International Congress of Electricians . He died at Newtonville, Massachusetts, on the 21st of January 1901 . Among his later inventions were appliances for multiplex telegraphy and the telautograph, a machine for the electric transmission of handwriting .

He experimented in the submarine use of electric bells for signalling . Gray wrote, besides scientific addresses and many monographs, Telegraphy and Telephony (1878) and

Electricity and Magnetism (1900) .