Merritt Gally was the son of David K. and Anna (Wilder) Gaily. He was born near Rochester, New York, in which town his parents settled a year after Merritt’s birth.
His father, a Presbyterian clergyman, died when the boy was six years old. When his mother married a second time five years later, young Gaily, then eleven years old, became a printer’s “devil. ”
Determined to have a more liberal education, Gally entered the University of Rochester in 1859 and worked his way through college, earning money by engraving, and graduated with the degre’e of B. A. in 1863.
Immediately thereafter, he entered Auburn Theological Seminary, graduating in 1866. The University of Rochester conferred the honorary degree of M. A. on Gally in 1873, and that of Sc. D. in 1904.
Gally was particularly attracted to the engraving side of the business, and by close observation within five years, he had mastered the engraver’s art and was doing most of this work for his employer. He also worked for a time with his stepfather, a skilled mechanic, thus gaining some experience in the mechanical field.
He was ordained by the Presbytery of Lyons, New York, on March 11, 1867, during the succeeding year had a parish in Marion, New York, and then for two years was pastor of a church in Rochester.
At the end of this brief ministry, he returned to his first love, the printing trade.
In 1873, Gaily transferred his business office to New York and contracted with the Colt Fire Arms Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connectiut, for the manufacture of his press, receiving royalties until the expiration of the patent in 1886.
Many improvements were incorporated in the “Universal” by the Colt Company during the life of the Gaily patent, and after the expiration of the patent that company continued to manufacture the press without Gaily, whereupon he instituted legal proceedings to prevent it but was defeated after a bitter contest.
Subsequently he arranged with the National Machine Company, Hartford, to make and sell his presses, which were sold during the succeeding years under the names “Hartford” and “National”; a year before his death, he sold all of his patent rights to this concern.
In 1872, he was granted two patents for a composing machine or linotype introducing the wedge for justification.
For the last twenty years of his life, he lived more or less in retirement at his home in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1869, Gally patented a platen job-printing-press which combined in one machine a number of features tending to excellence in job-printing work. He had it manufactured in Rochester under a licensing agreement, and it was widely sold under the name “Universal. ” Gally’s financial success was based almost entirely on his printing-press patents but his inventive genius was applied in other directions as well; in all, he acquired a total of fifty patents, involving over 500 claims. In 1873, he devised a method for converting in machinery variable into invariable velocity without affecting the source of power. During this decade, too, he experimented with and patented a system of multiplex telegraphy as well as philosophical apparatus, and turned his attention to automatic musical instruments. He invented in 1876, and undertook to manufacture, a machine for slotting paper used in controlling the pneumatic action of self-playing instruments; he invented a back vent system for tubular church organs and the counterpoise pneumatic system for player pianos. In 1888, he perfected a device for automatically loading and exposing photographic plates and later patented a telephone repeater for long-distance transmission.
On August 15, 1866, Gally had married Mary A. Carpenter of Rye, New York, who with one son survived him.
