I am planning to visit the Archives Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC at the end of February. An application for travel money is pending.
The main goal of my research visit is to collect information about Elisha Gray's invention of the telautograph, a writing device which allowed writing by hand at-a-distance. Finding out about its technical specifications as well as its intended and actual applications will, eventually, help me in at least partially rewrite the history of facsimile machines. I believe it is crucial to add to this history the distinction between devices scanning and printing existing documents (writing as image) and devices creating identical handwritten documents in different locations (writing as process).
I have been in contact with Alison Oswald, inventors and technology archivist at the Archives Center at the Smithsonian Institution who will assist me during my visit. I am planning to look at the obvious materials but also at Gray's correspondence. The collection also contains an unpublished manuscript by Lloyd William Taylor, The Untold Story of the Telephone, 1933, which discusses in detail the competition between Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell including their mutual interest in the development of the telautograph.
Working at the Archives Center will include sorting through the Elisha Gray collection to identify relevant documents on the telautograph; making photocopies and/or taking digital pictures of these documents; cross-search for new sources used by Taylor in his research; prepare research on the telautograph demonstrations at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. For the Chicago part of my research, I am applying for a McGill Arts Graduate Student Travel Award.
In preparation of this visit, I have been collecting news reports about the telautograph, Gray's own publications as well as the various patents submitted by Gray all of which are publicly available.