Career
The Gray code, or reflected binary code, appearing in Gray"s 1953 patent, is a binary numeral system often used in electronics, but with many applications in mathematics. Gray conducted pioneering research on the development of television He proposed an early form of "flying spot scanner" for early television systems in 1927, and helped develop a two-way mechanically scanned television system in 1930.
With Pierre Mertz, Gray wrote the classic paper on the mathematics of raster scan systems in 1934.
He later participated in the early days of the digital revolution, with Raymond West. Sears, William M. Goodall, John Robinson Pierce, and others at Bell Labs, by providing the binary code used by Sears in his Protein-Calorie Malnutrition tube, a beam-deflection tube of the type that Sears and Pierce collaborated on, which was used in Goodall"s "Television by pulse code modulation". With Herbert East. Ives as co-inventor, Gray filed for two United States patents in 1927: "Electro-optical system" (United States 2,037,471, issued April 14, 1936) and "Electro-optical transmission" (United States 1,759,504, issued May 20, 1930), and one in just his own name: "Television system" (United States 2,113,254, issued April 5, 1938).
He patented many other similar-sounding inventions over the years that followed.