Ignatev, Grigorii

Ignat’ev, Grigorii Grigor’evich 

Born Sept. 11 (23), 1846; died 1898. Russian military signalman.

After graduating from the Military Engineering College in St. Petersburg, Ignat’ev served in the military telegraph corps. In 1880 he designed the world’s first system for simultaneously sending telegraph and telephone messages over the same wire. The same year he demonstrated his system in action at the physics laboratory of the University of Kiev, and in early 1881 the system was successfully tested over a 14.5-km line. However, Ignat’ev’s system did not become widely known because it was the property of the defense department. Only in 1892 was he allowed to exhibit his instruments at the Fourth Electrical Engineering Exhibition in St. Petersburg, where he was awarded a gold medal.

REFERENCE

Epshtein, S. L. “Pionery odnovremennogo telefonirovaniia i telegrafi-rovaniia.” In Sbornik trudov Leningradskogo elektrotekhnicheskogoin-ta sviazi, issue 4. Leningrad, 1949.