Prof. Elisha Gray, and his Autotelegraph

It has educated the public to the use of wires and has created a demand for a better and different class of service, something that will supplement both the telegraph and the telephone, something that will do what a letter does in matters of business, and can be sent as quickly as a telegram. All this is realized 1887 in the Teleautograph (the first Teleautograph from Elisha Gray), an instrument (as its name implies) that will transmitt one´s own handwriting to a distance, by means of electricity.

The Teleautograph reproduce at a distance a writing or drawing by means of a pen whose motion is controlled by the pencil with which the writing or drawing is being made at the sending station.
The principle underlying teleautograph systems was invented by Elish Gray, but the instruments around 1925 used somewhat in America and England are called the Richie teleautograph or telewriter, after Foster Ritchie who made essential improvements.
The first telewriter exchange, having 50 subscribers, but providing for 750 more, was started in England in 1910.

The transmitting and receiving instruments are so related to each other that every motion of the transmitting pen or pencil, as the case may be, is accurately copied by the receiving pen, wheter on or off the paper.
In other words, it is a long pen, that writes in two citys simultaneously, making a double record, the one an exact fac-simile of the oher, just as the telephone is a long tongue that is heard in two cities at the same time, Even the paper at the receiving end is under the control of the writer, and can be shifted at will.

The Teleautograph 1893

(C) Marius Rensen

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