Elisha Gray was born on August 2nd, 1835 to Quaker farmers David Gray and Christiana Edgerton Gray in Barnesville, Ohio. Elisha Gray is most well known for the legal battle he engaged in with Alexander Graham Bell over the patent of the telephone. Throughout his life, he worked as a carpenter, blacksmith, and boat builder. When Gray was twenty two, he finished high school and attended Oberlin College in pursuit of a science degree. Gray got his first patent five years later for the telegraphic relay. Soon after, in 1869, he founded the Western Electric Company. He filed his patent for the telephone in 1876, and a legal battle occurred not long after. There was a conspiracy that Bell knew of Gray’s caveat for the telephone and filed the patent anyway. Gray lost the legal battle, but he did make more money from other patents.
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Despite his loss, he kept inventing and eventually patented the early fax machine. Gray was granted over seventy patents in his lifetime, one being the music synthesizer, among others. When Gray was at Oberlin, he met and married Delia Minerva Shepard in 1862. Throughout his lifetime, Gray lived in Ohio, Illinois, and Massachusetts. He died near Boston and was buried in Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.
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