Graybar Co-Founder"”Elisha Gray
National Inventors' Day Spotlight
Elisha Gray was a renowned inventor who, along with Enos Barton, co-founded Gray and Barton in 1869. Their company later became known as the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Western Electric had a supply department that sold products from many manufacturers. in 1925, the supply department was spun off as a separate company, named Graybar after the two founders.
Gray's personal story has many twists and turns. In the early 1870's, he began a series of experiments that would lead him into America's most famous patent contest. While Alexander Graham Bell is credited with the patent of the telephone, there are others who claim ownership of the invention, including Elisha Gray.
On Valentine's Day 1876, Bell and Gray each submitted an application to the U.S. Patent Office for a device to transmit the human voice over a wire"”in other words, a telephone. On March 7, 1876, after reviewing their competing applications, the patent office awarded a patent to Bell, saying his papers had arrived two hours before Gray's.
Gray sued, claiming that Bell had stolen his idea, and took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost. As a result, Bell obtained what was perhaps the most valuable patent in history and won enduring fame as the telephone's creator. Gray had many supporters who disputed the court's decision. His application, they insisted, was delivered to the patent office in the morning but remained near the bottom of the in-basket until the afternoon. According to this version, Bell's application was filed at noon, but Bell's lawyer requested that it be entered immediately in the receipt book"”hence, Bell's narrow victory.
When Gray died in 1901, his obituary in the New York Times predicted he would "receive full justice at the hands of future historians by being immortalized as the inventor of the speaking telephone." That did not happen.
Two books have revived the controversy with a vengeance. The Telephone Patent Conspiracy by A. Edward Evenson, published in 2001, says Gray may have filed his application with the patent office before Bell, but a clerk with a drinking problem was bribed by Bell's wealthy backers"”without Bell's knowledge"”to change the order of the filings and give Bell the victory.
The Telephone Gambit by science journalist Seth Shulman, published in 2008, goes further. It claims that Bell"”aided by unprincipled attorneys and a corrupt patent examiner"”got a sneak look at Gray's application and quickly copied Gray's idea before submitting his own papers. According to Shulman, Bell's lawyers then had the order of the filings changed so that Bell's came first.
Even though Gray would never be recognized as the inventor of the telephone, he was awarded more than 70 patents and authored several books in his lifetime. He is Graybar's technological founder and regarded as one of the most important inventors in U.S. history.