Elisha Gray

NAME: Elisha Gray

BORN: 1835

COMMUNITY AFFILIATIONS: born...Barnesville, Ohio (Belmont County)

OCCUPATION: inventor

DIED: 1901

FAST FACTS: Gray was ALMOST the inventor of the telephone. He was independently working on the same technology as Alexander Graham Bell right around the same time. However, as the story goes, Bell beat Gray to the Patent Office by one hour.

Gray DID invent the "musical telegraph," one of the earliest electronic musical instruments. He dicovered that he could manipulate sound via a self vibrating electromagnetic circuit, thus inventing a basic single note oscillator. His design could play two octaves.