Businessman. The inventor of the five-day work week, he was the president, owner and primary inventor at the Rochester Can Company in the 1910s when he had the chance to observe Alfred Wright’s system of Monday-to-Friday and a half day on Saturday, which gave Wright’s employees a half day free of work to recuperate before church on Sundays in order that they could be good employees and good Christians at the same time. Gray took this one step further, removing the religious element and instituting the five-day work week, giving his employees a whole two days to be with their families and do whatever they wanted before having to return to the grind on Monday morning. Henry Ford, impressed by the effectiveness on production of the plan, adopted the scheme and it quickly became the standard for skilled trades throughout the U.S. (bio by: Mount Hope NY)