larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) (03/23/91)
In article <telecom11.196.9@eecs.nwu.edu> 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) writes: > > From L. M. Boyd's March 1 column: > > "William Gray wanted to call his sick wife, but his foreman wouldn't > > let him use the company phone. That's why Gray invented the pay phone > > in 1889." I have heard the same story. > This sounds like one of those colorful bits of early telecom > history. However, I carry the notion that the Gray Paystation was > simply a product line name of the Automatic Electric Company, which > became the repository of Gray's and Strowger's patents. Gray's work pre-dates the Automatic Electric Company, which was not formed until 1901, and its antecedent, the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company, formed in 1891. Gray was independent of any other company until at least 1905, when he started a patent infringement suit against the Baird Manufacturing Company. > I have some authoritative history of non-Bell telephone > interests, which are quick to claim any telephonic invention _not_ > made by Bell, and I don't recall the paystation being among their > claims of a non-Bell invention. > Anybody out there have more on this? If one considers a public telephone using an attendant to collect the money, then the honor of being first apparently goes to Thomas B. Doolittle of the Social Telegraph Association in Bridgeport, CT. The year was 1878. By 1880, other attended pay stations were available from the Connecticut Telephone Company and the American District Telegraph Co. in New York City. Obviously, ADT once provided a service that they no longer offer today. :-) The first pay station that collected money by itself was the subject of U.S. Patent 327,073 issued to H. Edmunds and C. Howard on September 29, 1885. While this was a very workable design (as opposed to many other patents that were impracticable), it seems to have never been manufactured in any quantity. The Edmunds and Howard device apparently pre-dates work of William Gray, who did not receive his first patent until 1889. However, Gray took on a partner, George A. Long, and began the manufacture of pay stations in 1889 under the name of the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company. The first Gray device was installed in Hartford, CT in 1889. In 1890, New York Telephone installed ten pay stations which they bought from J. H. Bunnell and Company, with such devices being the subject of a patent issued to H. Root. For Western Electric fans, the first pay station was implemented by connecting a standard telephone to the No. 1A Coin Collector, which was the subject of a patent issued on October 1, 1895. Gray continued with much further development in the area of pay stations. He is credited with inventing the concept of a coin gong around 1890, later expanded to a multi-coin arrangement that was patented in 1892. Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp. "Have you hugged your cat today?" VOICE: 716/688-1231 {boulder, rutgers, watmath}!ub!kitty!larry FAX: 716/741-9635 [note: ub=acsu.buffalo.edu] uunet!/ \aerion!larry