Donald Murray (inventor)
Donald Murray (born September 20, 1865 in Invercargill , New Zealand , † July 14, 1945 in Territet near Montreux , Switzerland ) was a journalist, writer and inventor .
He was instrumental in the development of type printing telegraph to telegraph and pass to it the expansion of the Baudot code for Baudot-Murray code back to the year 1932 by the CCITT as "International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2" (shortly CCITT 2 or ITA2 ) and was not replaced by ASCII until 1962 .
During the last years of his life he wrote a two-volume philosophical book called The Philosophy of Power .
Life
Donald Murray was the son of John Murray, a branch of the Bank of Otago , in 1863, only two years from before the birth of his son Scottish Glasgow had emigrated. In 1866, John Murray moved to the Bank of New Zealand in Auckland , where Donald attended the Auckland Grammar School from 1875 to 1881 and received his first academic awards. At the age of 21 he sailed around Cape Horn to Europe and stayed in Dresden for one winter . On his return to Auckland he studied at the University of New Zealand there and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in December 1890. While still a student, he had started to work for The New Zealand Herald . In 1891 he moved to Australia, worked for The Sydney Morning Herald and studied at Sydney University until he graduated in April 1892 as a "Master of Arts in the School of Logic, Mental and Moral Philosophy, and Political Philosophy".
While at the Sydney Morning Herald , he came up with the idea for a teletypewriter. During his time at the newspaper, telegrams were sent by telegraphers in Morse code, noted as plain text on a telegram form and delivered by runners or by bicycle. His idea revolved around a machine that was supposed to send in Morse code, but could be operated with the keyboard of a typewriter without knowing the Morse code. His first experiments to demonstrate the usefulness of his idea consisted in connecting standard typewriters to a telegraph. He applied for his first US patent on this in 1892, while he was still in Australia. With his invention he made an early decision to use a QWERTY keyboard layout and developed a suitable modification of the code developed by Émile Baudot in 1870 .
In the fall of 1899 he went to New York and looked for financial support to implement his idea. To his horror, his demonstration machine had suffered damage on the crossing from Australia and only partially reached the office of Scientific American , a scientific journal that was very popular at the time. However, he managed to repair the parts to the extent that he could successfully explain the purpose and function of the device. His lack of knowledge as an engineer earned him very mocking reporting. The editorial staff of Scientific American described his machine as a cross between a sewing machine and an organ organ and in view of the rotating lever required to operate it, it soon became known in sensational journalism as "Murray's coffee grinder" and "Australian sausage machine".
Nevertheless, the demonstration served its purpose of finding a sponsor for further development. The Postal Telegraph-Cable Company financed him and received the rights to three patents for his scribe-telegraph. He kept two other patents for improving the mechanism. The article that appeared on the completed system in 1906 reported, besides the appearance of the machine, mainly positive properties. He was openly admitted that his system for long-distance telegraphy or for press releases was previously unrivaled. However, Swiss Post complained about susceptibility to errors and the operator's restriction. In practice, if the care required for texts is applied, hardly more than 40 words of the theoretical more than 100 words per minute can be achieved. Similar devices are already piling up in the patent offices, but most of them are only of interest as curiosities, since they have had enough.
Murray left the United States disappointed and worked for the British General Post Office until 1909 , when he finally opened a telegraph factory with Sidney George Brown at 55 Goswell Road, London . He sold devices in several countries, so Western Union took a closer look at his system. Murray sold the rights to use his invention for the United States on April 12, 1912 to Western Union, who then gradually exchanged their older Morse telegraphs for Murray's "Teletypewriter". He worked with Western Union for the next twelve years. For equipment and spare parts there was a very close connection between Western Union and the Western Electric Company , a subsidiary of the AT&T group and their specialist in device construction. Western Electric was hired as a supplier on the terms of the Western Union and showed an interest in taking over the patents itself instead. When she could not agree on the terms with Murray, she seems to have threatened to be able to bypass the patents easily. In any case, Murray responded in 1914 with an article in the Telegraph and Telephone Journal , in which he complained about what he saw as unscrupulous tactics by the American corporation that was trying to rob him of the fruits of his labor.
In 1925 Murray broke his connection with the Western Union and left the rights to Creed & Company , which merged with International Telephone & Telegraph in 1928 .
In 1940 Donald Murray was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent several surgeries in Monte Carlo . He then moved to Switzerland with his wife Patricia (née Cosgrove). The couple had no children. Donald Murray died at the age of 79 in Territet, a suburb of Montreux, Switzerland.
Inventions
He earned numerous patents for his inventions and improvements to the early teleprinter. However, the big breakthrough for this new type of device was only achieved by successors who took up its technology and developed it further. Among them in particular Edward E. Kleinschmidt and Howard Krum from Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company , the later Teletype Corporation .
The code he developed became the basis of a whole generation of devices in later telegraph and telex operations. Nevertheless, it remained associated with the name of the French inventor Émile Baudot and was rarely referred to as the Murray Code.
Works
Magazine articles
- Setting type by telegraph . In: Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers , Volume: 34, Issue: 172, 1905. pp. 555-597.
- Practical aspects of printing telegraphy . In: Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers , Volume: 47, Issue 209, 1911. pp. 450-516
- Press the Button Telegraphy . Series of articles in: Telegraph and Telephone Journal 1914/1915
- Speeding up the Telegraphs; a Forecast of the New Telegraphy. In: Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Volume: 63, Issue: 339, 1925. pp. 245-272
Books
- Murray Printing Telegraph , Unwin Bros., The Gresham Press, Sydney 1905
- The Philosophy of Power , Volume 1: First Principles , Williams and Norgate Limited, London 1939
- The Philosophy of Power , Volume 2: The Theory of Control , Williams and Norgate, London 1940
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c The Philosophy of power / by Donald Murray . In: National Library of Australia , accessed October 22, 2015
- ^ Printing-Telegraph , Patent No. 498,674 A, May 30, 1893. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
- ^ A b c New Zealand's Donald Murray: The Father of the Remote Typewriter . In: ozTypewiter.com, March 9, 1012, accessed October 22, 2015
- ^ Printing-Telegraph , Patent No. 653,934 A. Printing-Telegraph , Patent No. 653,935 A and Printing-Telegraph , Patent No. 653,936 A, July 17, 1900. In: freepatentsonline.com, accessed October 22, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Murray, Donald |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | inventor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 20, 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Invercargill , New Zealand |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 14, 1945 |
| Place of death | Territet , Switzerland |