The Rev. Dr. Samuel Spahr Laws (March 23, 1824 – January 9, 1921) was an American minister, professor, physician, college president, businessman and inventor best known today as the inventor of the Laws Gold Indicator, a predecessor of the ticker tape machine.He was an 1848 graduate and class valedictorian of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and a member of the Alpha chapter of Beta Theta Pi, founded only 9 years before his graduation in 1839.