The son of Scottish immigrants, William Gray (1850–1903) was one of five children who was born in a small Connecticut town but soon moved to one of the country’s largest cities: Boston. When Gray came of age, his father, Neil, who was a bridge builder, sought employment for his young son. Rather than the strenuous labor of building bridges, Neil acquired for his son a job with a local druggist. This first job would not last long. After only a few months, it was clear to the business owner that Gray was not cut out for the boredom of the drug store. The owner informed Neil that “[William] was always down cellar or elsewhere, whittling things out of wood, making models.” The young man’s father was able to maneuver him from drugstore to machine shop.
Back to Connecticut
William Gray. Public Domain
After a few years working in Boston, Gray moved back to Connecticut. This time, he chose Hartford, the new sole capital of the Constitution State. Connecticut had used a rare bi-capital system since 1701 with New Haven and Hartford as its capitals. In 1873, the state legislature officially declared Hartford the state’s capital, a decision that became effective two years later. Gray worked as a polisher at a local armory (possibly Colt Armory), until taking a job with the machine shop Pratt & Whitney.
Gray found stability with Pratt & Whitney, becoming head of the company’s polishing department, and remaining with the company for 15 years. He also became close to the owners of the company, specifically Amos Whitney.
Although he had a good job that paid him well, Gray still worked on other projects. His ideas would benefit the employees of Pratt & Whitney, the game of baseball, and eventually the world over.
New Inventions
Gray improved the company’s belt shifter, which was used to move belts from one pulley to another. The company approved the new invention and Gray sold it to the company. He was a baseball enthusiast and believed he could make a better bat than what was currently used. Noticing that baseball bats were at times difficult to hold onto while swinging, which required taping, grooves, or a sticky substance, he developed the sand-handle bat.
The handle of the baseball bat would be “covered with a hard granulated material. … The bat, as thus prepared, can be firmly grasped in the hand of the player, with no danger of its slipping from his grasp, as so often occurs.” Gray had his invention patented in 1884, and suggested that the “granulated material” could also be used for “cricket-bats, tennis, racquets, lacrosse-sticks, and the like.” He sold his invention to the sporting goods manufacturer, A.G. Spalding, but the bat was not successful.
His next baseball invention, however, did sell well. Being a catcher in baseball is notably the game’s most dangerous job, with fastballs, curveballs, and sliders careening toward the plate, not to mention ricochets off of bats. As has been the case since the game’s beginning, the catcher’s body takes the brunt of the punishment when the ball slips past his glove. Gray’s “body protector” was created to “serve as a cover or guard to protect any part of the trunk, limbs, or person of the wearer from the injurious effect of blows” and was made “with a supporting fabric of flexible material, a plural number of hollow springs pervious to air and secured to the supporting fabric.” Gray sold his 1887 invention to A.G. Spalding.
An Emergency Phone Call
It was the following year that Gray developed his greatest idea. For more than a decade, the telephone had been in use (Alexander Graham Bell had patented the phone in 1876). Phones were installed in businesses and in homes, but were used through a subscription. The subscription was rather cost-prohibitive, which meant the phone wasn’t in very many homes. Gray happened to own a home without a phone.
One day in 1888, Gray’s wife, Louise, became very sick. Gray needed to contact a doctor quickly. He ran down his street to a local factory to use their phone. The business initially refused to let him use the phone due to the expensive proposition. After explaining his dire situation, they relented. The doctor was called and Louise eventually made a full recovery. The situation, however, caused Gray to consider the necessity of making an emergency phone call, regardless of where a person was.
Patenting the Pay Phone
“The object of my invention is to provide an apparatus that may be used in connection with a telephone as a pay-station,” Gray’s patent reads. His “coin controlled apparatus for telephones” patent was approved on Aug. 13, 1889. That same year, the “World’s First Pay Telephone. Invented by William Gray and Developed by George A. Long, was installed on this corner in 1889.” That quote is from a plaque on a business building in downtown Hartford.
Gray and Long continued to improve upon the pay phone with numerous patents. On June 23, 1891, Gray’s “signal device for telephone pay-stations” patent was approved. This created a bell system that enabled the phone operator to ensure the right amount of money had been paid for the phone call (at the time, calls were paid for after the fact, which meant usage of the pay phone was based on the honor system). The prepay phone system was created around the turn of the 20th century.
Typical dime payphone in use until the late 1960s. Doug Coldwell/CC BY-SA 3.0
The same year Gray’s “signal device” patent was approved, he, along with the aforementioned George Long, founded the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company. He also resigned from his position at Pratt & Whitney, but apparently there were no hard feelings, as Amos Whitney became president of the new company.
Despite the death of Gray in 1903, the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company remained a very successful and profitable company for decades, even during the Great Depression. As an Oct. 27, 1930 Time magazine article noted, “Beneath Gray’s prosperity lie basic patents for pay telephone equipment, of which it is the sole manufacturer.”
Although pay phones have now gone the way of the Dodo, they remain a substantial part of American culture, and specifically pop culture, playing significant roles in movies like “The Birds” (1963), “The Matrix” (1999), and, most prominently, a 2002 film called “Phone Booth.”
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Dustin Bass
Author
Dustin Bass is the creator and host of the American Tales podcast, and co-founder of The Sons of History. He writes two weekly series for The Epoch Times: Profiles in History and This Week in History. He is also an author.
