History of Barnesville, (Belmont County) Ohio United States of America

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Elisha Gray, inventor, was born in Barnesville, Ohio, Aug. 2, 1835; son of David and Christiana (Edgerton) Gray; grandson of Samuel and Mary (Moore) Gray, and of Richard and Mary (Hall) Edgerton; and a descendant of Andrew Moore. His father died in 1847, and the son received a limited district school education, learned the trades of blacksmith, carpenter and boat builder, and while engaged in the prosecution of a course of studies at Oberlin college, earned his living and tuition by working as a carpenter and by constructing apparatus for class-room experiments. He later devoted his entire attention to telegraphy, patenting in America and elsewhere over one hundred devices for telegraphic and telephonic apparatus between 1865 and 1877. On Feb. 14, 1876, he filed specifications for a speaking telephone, reproducing articulate speech by varying the resistance of a battery current. His multiplex telegraph, capable of transmitting various tones simultaneously over the same wire and subject to analysis by the receiver, was secured by caveat in November, 1874, and by a parent in January, 1877. He engaged in manufacturing telegraphic and telephonic apparatus in Chicago and Cleveland, 1869-71, and was electrician of the Western electric manufacturing company, 1871-74. He invented a device for turning paper over when it came from the press; an electric needle annunciator for hotels; an elevator annunciator; the telegraphic switch; and a dial telegraphic instrument for reading from an alphabet dial, a pointer indicating each letter, succeeded by his printing telegraphic receiver which survived in the "tape machine" and "ticker." One of Professor Gray's most remarkable inventions is the telautograph, first patented in 1888, to reproduce at long distances written messages or drawings in facsimile. In 1900 he was engaged in experimenting on a system of sub marine signalling between ships at sea and ships anal the shore. In 1878 the French government made him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He received a gold medal for research in telegraphy in Paris in 1878, and another in 1881, also a gold medal front the Franklin institute in 1887 for the telautograph. He was elected an honorary member of the American philosophical society, a fellow of the American association for the advancement of science and a member of the American institute of electrical engineers and of the Society of telegraph engineers, London. He became professor of dynamic electricity in Oberlin college in 1880, also holding the same chair in Lake Forest university. He organized the World's congress of electricians which met in Chicago in 1893, and was its chairman. He was married to Delia M. Shepard of Oberlin, Ohio. He received the degree of A.M. from Oberlin in 1878, and that of LL.D. from Blackburn university. He published Experimental Researches in Electro-Harmonic Telegraphy and Telephony (1878); Nature's Miracles (1899); and numerous scientific articles contributed to periodicals. He died in Newtoville, Mass., Jan. 21, 1901.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Barnesville, (Belmont County) Ohio

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