Elleda Wilson: Are you there?

Aug. 4—From The Daily Morning Astorian, Aug. 5, 1888, a tidbit about a new invention, "special to the Astorian" from Washington, D.C.:

—Prof. Elisha Gray has obtained a patent for a instrument called the Telautograph, designed for transmitting messages by wire by sender, in his own handwriting, doing away with skilled operators ...

Note: This device was actually an early precursor of the facsimile (fax) machine, and he received six patents for it between 1888 and 1893.

"By my invention you can sit down in your office in Chicago, take a pencil in your hand, write a message to me, and as your pencil moves, a pencil here in my laboratory moves simultaneously, and forms the same letters and words in the same way," Gray said in an interview.

The telautograph's original use was to transmit signatures for banks and legal documents. After several name changes over the decades, the company was purchased by Xerox in 1999.

By the way, Gray is also considered the father of the modern music synthesizer and, although he's the original inventor of the telephone technology, Alexander Graham Bell snagged the patent first.