Gray Telephone Pay Station Company Payphones List
The Gray Telephone Pay Station Company was founded in 1891 by William Gray, inventor of the first practical coin-operated payphone. Based in Hartford, Connecticut, the company pioneered public telephone access by manufacturing and installing coin-controlled pay stations across the United States. Gray’s designs enabled unattended public calling and rapidly expanded telephone use beyond private subscribers. The company became a major employer and installed tens of thousands of early payphones before patent expirations allowed competitors to enter the market. Gray’s work established the technical and commercial foundations of the modern payphone industry.
‘PUBLIC TELEPHONES’
It was the Public Telephone (pay phone) which really placed the
telephone into the hands of the general public. In the early days
of the telephone, the fees charged by the telephone companies for
telephone service were far beyond the reach of the ordinary wage
earner. Telephone services were therefore confined to business
houses and the wealthy minority. A telephone was indeed a luxury!
Moreover, the telephone companies imposed strict controls on the
use of the services they connected. Only the actual subscriber
(and his family, or staff presumably) were entitled to make calls
from their telephone.
“Public” telephone service was available, however, through the use
of telephone bureaux where attendants placed the call and collected
the fee from the caller. These telephone bureaux were quite
lavish- they actually were small rooms, with a chair so that the
caller could use the telephone in some comfort.
This type of attendant service was naturally expensive, and with
restricted hours and therefore not very successful.
In 1888, William Gray, a machinist at Colt’s Amory in Hartford,
Connecticut, USA, first developed the idea of a pay station freely
available to the public, day and night. He thought of this idea
after he had tried to get to a telephone to call a doctor for his
wife who was critically ill. The only nearby telephone was in a
factory; he was refused the use of the telephone until he pleaded
his urgent necessity to a company official, who granted permission
only grudgingly. Gray offered to pay, but the official refused to
accept reimbursement, saying that the use of the telephone was
restricted to subscribers only.
Thus the idea occurred to Gray that should a means of payment
feasible, the public would be able to obtain telephone service
regardless of their status as non-subscriber.
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Being naturally inventive and of mechanical bent, Gray began to
work out plans for a machine to replace the attendant at the
public bureaux. His first “paystation” idea was a coin-operated
latch on the door of the cubicle housing the phone. The telephone
itself was not coin-operated.
This idea quickly proved unsuccessful, so his next model (1889) had
a coin operated device fitted on the telephone to unlock the receiver,
but the caller had to hold the lock open with his elbow for the
duration of the call Another model at this time had the coinoperated device fitted to unlock the generator handle (this was in
the days of generator signalling manual telephones of course).
The first paystation phone was installed in 1889 in the foyer of
the old Hartford Bank in Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1891, William Gray formed the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company
(one of the first officers of this company was Amos Whitney, who
went on later to form the famous Pratt & Whitney machinery company).
Gradually other paystations were installed around Connecticut,
but acceptance was generally slow. For various reasons, the
idea of a coin operated lock on the receiver or generator was
not successful and Gray’s next model was the now standard idea
of a coin receptacle with a means of indicating to the operator
that the coin had been deposited. The method he used had a gong
which was struck by a plunger which the caller pressed – a coin
had to be deposited to unlock the plunger. A problem of course
was how to let the operator hear the gong chime when the plunger
was pressed. The method Gray used first was a type of acoustic
horn (like a speaking tube) which extended from the gong up to
the phone’s transmitter.
The plunger system however was too complicated; the solution was
found when a workman accidentally dropped a coin onto a gong
which was lying on his workbench. There was the neat solution –
place the gong in the path of the falling coin and the plunger
system was obsolete.
The acoustic horn idea also was not very effective, so to convey
the sounds of the gong adequately to the operator, a separate
transmitter was fitted inside the coin compartment.
Gray then hit upon the idea of the “resonant” sound connection –
he found that the sound waves from the gong would travel to
telephone transmitter, provided it was rigidly attached to the
same part of the phone as the gong, and the operator could then
hear the sound of the gong clearly.
This was the basic patent which Gray secured for his paystation –
the method of conveying the indication of coin payment to the
Exchange operator. All other paystations had to use the same
system.
By 1905 there were 25 different companies making and marketing
paystation telephones, all infringing Gray’s patent covering the
basic pay station principle. Gray started suit in 1905 against
these companies, and the legal battles raged up to the highest
courts, where the final decision was in favour of the Gray
Company. The original patents were found to be valid, and also
pioneer in scope. Instead of seeking damages from the infringing
manufacturers, Gray compelled them to cease making pay stations
and to destroy their remaining stocks. For the thousands of
instruments these companies had then in use, he settled for the
attachment of licence plates to each instrument, informing of
the Gray patents. A further stipulation was that, as each
infringing instrument was taken out of service, it would not
be revised.
In the case of the Western Electric Company, Gray accepted
settlement based on legal costs, about $15000.
The Gray Telephone Pay Station Company was bought out by Automatic
Electric Company in 1948.