Thesis abstract

This is the first study of the telautograph, a device that transmitted the movement of a writing hand over telegraph lines to a remote fountain pen that simultaneously replicated the author’s moving hand. I argue that the telautograph created a unique niche within the media landscape of the late 19th century: it provided a novel and instantaneous way to communicate long-distance and was thus unprecedented as a writing technology. It transmitted handwriting, clearly a familiar and trusted technology and clearly attributable to an individual person. Yet it produced writing in the absence of the writer, thus challenging notions of authenticity and context of origin. In addition, I establish that Elisha Gray’s particular business strategy combined with certain technical short-comings limited the telautograph’s adoption despite unanimously favourable reviews.

Today, handwriting similarly inhabits a borderland in our culture. Its increasingly limited practice is in competition with various forms of typing, yet handwritten documents are generally perceived as more personal and authentic than electronic documents. I propose that the cultural appreciation of handwriting stems from the notion of physical authenticity, the particular physical bond that exists between a writer and a text, a bond that we think is different from the link between a writer and an electronic text. I identify five assumptions on handwriting: (1) handwriting is produced by the body/hand while typewriting is produced by a machine; (2) a handwritten text leads to an individual while a typed text leads to a device; (3) handwriting directly reflects our thoughts while typing leaves doubts in this regard; (4) handwriting cannot be copied while typing creates only copies; (5) handwriting implies presence while typing implies absence. I use these assumptions to explore the historical trajectory of handwriting practices. I thus examine scenes of writing in the 19th century (the telautograph) and 21st century (signing and handwriting practices today) and portray the respective semantics, gestures, and instruments.

The Swiss inventor Gustav Adolf Hasler (1830-1900) described in 1873 a ‘Pantographe éléctrique,’ an electric pantograph which transmitted the movement of a pen over a telegraph connection. Pantograph is a collective term describing any device that duplicates writing or drawing through a series of connected mechanical arms. Hasler’s invention, however, was intended to duplicate at-a-distance, more precisely between a telegraphic transmitter and receiver. The device does not appear to have been commercially used.

In 1878, Edward A. Cowper was granted a patent in England for an ‘autographic telegraph.’ Subsequently, he applied for a patent in the U.S., where he described the workings of his invention:

In operating according to my invention the pen or other style is held in the hand of the operator writing, who writes upon a strip of paper that is caused to travel steadily under his pen […]. The pen or other style is connected by two light connecting-rods (or it may be by threads, if springs are added to keep the threads always tight) to the contact apparatus for sending the currents of the required strengths. […] I claim the method of effecting at a receiving-station the reproduction of characters written or marked at a sending-station, by means of electric currents varied in force by the movements of the sending style or tracer so as to produce correspondingly-varied movements of the receiving style or tracer.

These mechanisms generally seem similar to the ones realized by Elisha Gray ten years later. Both science magazines and newspapers reported about Cowper’s machine at the time.

In 1885, James H. Robertson applied for a patent for an autographic telegraph. Robertson filed several more patents pertaining to this invention over the next ten years. He was reportedly unaware of Cowper’s device when he started working on his own. In his patents, Robertson is described as the ‘assignor to the Writing Telegraph Company of New York.’ In an advertisement in 1888, a crucial year in Gray’s telautograph project, the Writing Telegraph Co. was looking for investors: “This company owns controlling patents in all prominent countries. […] Having perfected its instruments, it is ready to extend its business, not only for the distributing of news, but for private lines and the establishing of exchanges similar to those of the telephone.” Robertson and Gray, then, appear to have been in a head-to-head race, both in patenting and in developing a business for their inventions.

It is not clear when Gray started working on the telautograph. The earliest allusion I found in Gray’s own publication Experimental Researches in Electro-Harmonic Telegraphy and Telephony, published in 1878. In parts written as a diary, the text mentions Gray’s “experiments upon the general subject-matter of transmitting and receiving electrical vibrations” (1878: 33). In an entry entitled “Return to Chicago – Resumption of Experiments – 1874,” he formulates possible applications of this type of research:

[…] Up to this point my experiments had been mostly of a general character, with a view to determine in what line to first direct my efforts; for, as I have before stated, I foresaw as early as May [of 1874] the probable outcome of the invention in several of its ramifications; more particularly I saw its immediate application in the direction of multiple Morse telegraphy; its adaptation to a printing system, an autographic system and the transmission of spoken words. (1878: 33; emphasis added)

Although made in the context of his work on the telephone, this quote for the first time reveals Elisha Gray’s long-time vision of an “autographic system” or telegraphic signing and handwriting device. It also reveals that, in 1874, at least the core of the future telautograph already existed, what Gray calls “the invention.”

The Swiss inventor Gustav Adolf Hasler (1830-1900) described in 1873 an electric pantograph which transmitted the movement of a pen over telegraph. [Gustav Adolf Hasler, “Pantographe éléctrique.” Journal télégraphique 2.22 (October 1873): 344-46.]

Not much to report other than that I am looking into the notion of nostalgia in the context of handwriting and authenticity. It's interesting that the vast majority of publications in this area are in tourism studies.

Malcolm Gladwell's piece ("In the Air." The New Yorker May 12, 2008) on innovation uses Bell's and Gray's battle over the telephone patent as an illustration for the concept of multiple innovation or simultaneous discovery. I find it an interesting text, although it remains somewhat limited in its discussion of the process of innovation which it simply seems to reduce to the final product, e.g. the telephone. A more innovative approach in my view is, for instance, Michael E. Gorman's analysis of Bell's and Gray's mental models leading to their respective designs of the telephone (Michael E. Gorman, "Mind in the World: Cognition and Practice in the Invention of the Telephone." Social Studies of Science 27, no. 4 (1997): 583-624.), see post of Feb 13 below.

The transcription of the documents I collected at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives Center has led me to a few first insights regarding Elisha Gray's invention of the telautograph.
A first interesting insight gained from the material collected at the Smithsonian pertains to the business side of an invention. It appears that Elisha Gray filed a first patent application the moment he decided to pursue the development further in 1887. Only in 1888 did his technician L .O. McPherson begin regular experiments and Gray applied for another patent with a revised design. Also in 1888, documents show that he founded "Gray's National Telautograph Company" whose objects were to "promote, establish and maintain the general business of a telegraphic, telephone, and telautographic company […] particularly by means of what is known as the 'Telautograph System,' invented by Prof. Elisha Gray." This was months before they even had a workable machine and years before a marketable product.
The documents beautifully illustrate the arduous process of an inventor and his technician from their initial idea through the grinding series of failed experiments to their first working apparatus. Particularly the early samples show how far Gray and McPherson were from being able to reproduce handwriting. Their attempts in 1888 produced hardly legible angular scribbles at a 45 degree angle from the lines on the paper. The design around this time, then, seems to focus on the paper feeder mechanism. Slowly, by adjusting the paper feeder and pen lifter, the writing becomes first, legible, and by 1890, clearly recognizable in either Gray's or McPherson's hand. I was able to find the drawings and samples to visually illustrate this process of approximation at the Smithsonian.
The very early samples also seem to suggest an interesting reversal between the men's handwriting and the telautograph's reproductions. McPherson's lab diary is written in his quite beautiful handwriting. However, his handwriting appears childish and crude when he struggled to get the apparatus to write legibly. On the other hand, with the advanced telautograph, the written exchanges between Gray in his office and McPherson in the workshop became light-hearted and even humorous. These observations will inform my analysis of the subtle interactions between writer and writing device. For instance, does Gray's handwriting in his letters differ from his handwriting with the telautograph? In other words, does a user adjust his or her handwriting when working with such a technology? This could, ultimately, have legal consequences if we consider (digital) signing technologies and their judicial applications.

Research visit to Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, Chicago Public Library and Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois - April 7 to 11, 2008

Report

In the second half of the 19th century, typewriters appeared on the mass market, the postcard became popular and the telephone started spreading in the business world. Within this media landscape, Elisha Gray developed a device that transmitted the movement of a writing or drawing hand over telegraph lines to a remote fountain pen which simultaneously wrote a copy in the author's handwriting. The telautograph was hailed as "a beautiful invention" and expected to alter handwriting practices in various fields. And although it found widespread use in banks and train stations, for instance, it apparently never fulfilled its potential. My research seeks to historically situate this discrepancy in relation to today's gap which exists between a high esteem of handwriting and its vanishing practice.
The purpose of my visit to the Chicago Public Library and the Chicago Historical Society was to explore the moment when the product of Elisha Gray's arduous work in developing the telautograph was demonstrated to the masses at the 1893 Chicago World's Exhibition. The telautograph exhibit was a great success and I found numerous positive reviews in newspapers and scientific journals. Within the fair's Electricity Building, the exhibit took up considerable space on the upper floor and many of the photographs of the building's interior show an immense sign stating "Gray's Telautograph, head to stairs" which was also illuminated at night.
Although the Gray National Telautograph Company so far had mainly found customers using the apparatus inside their office buildings, I found new evidence from visitors' accounts indicating that Gray's initial vision must have been that first, the transmitting unit could become a mobile device and second, that the receiving unit would be found in private households. Possibly, technical limitations disallowed these applications. One observer of the telautograph demonstrations noted that the wire coils merely represented a theoretical possibility and that "the inventor will not dare to attempt to send a drawing […] from Chicago to New York." Other visitors perceived this long-distance handwriting device as a potential rival for the telephone.
Elisha Gray attended Oberlin College in Ohio for several years and later also taught there in the physics department. The department's chair from 1924 to 1948, Lloyd W. Taylor, collected and retained documents and correspondence relating to the famous inventor. My visit to the college archives revealed that Gray early and generously shared his plans on the telautograph. As early as 1888, when Gray had just hired a technician to work full-time on the development, a fellow physicist awaiting his visit, wrote to Gray: "You will bring along one of the 'pens' will you not? to explain the theory + the practice of it."
The McGill Arts Graduate Student Travel Award allowed me to consult these important materials. They are crucial for a historically adequate analysis of a long-distance handwriting technology which was developed at a time when new typing and transmission devices appeared, a situation similar to today's challenges posed to the practice of handwriting.

So there is this 'new' book out (Seth Shulman, The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 2008) on the race for the telephone patent between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray. According to an interview with the author, Seth Shulman, in the Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), the author discovered 'new' evidence that suggests that AGB received detailed information about EG's patent from a patent officer and subsequently, improved his patent application and hence, design:

I was able to find an affidavit by the telephone patent officer,
who was an alcoholic and indebted to Bell's law firm, who admitted he showed
Gray's notes to Bell. It was a pretty amazing thing to discover.

I hope (and I admit that I haven't been able to get a copy of the book yet) Mr. Shulman has more to offer than this 'new' evidence and argument because it has been published and argued many times before, e.g. in A. Edward Evenson's The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876 (Jefferson N.C.: McFarland, 2000).
More interesting is Michael E. Gorman's approach. He analyzed Bell's and Gray's different mental models and their mechanical representations (experimental telephones) with the conclusion that AGB and EG pursued rather different problem solving processes and thus suggesting that their respective patent applications were the result of unique design strategies. (Michael E. Gorman, "Mind in the World: Cognition and Practice in the Invention of the Telephone." Social Studies of Science 27, no. 4 (1997): 583-624.)