Charles Grafton Page
Encyclopedia
Charles Grafton Page was an American
electrical experimenter and inventor, physician
, patent examiner, patent advocate, and professor
of chemistry
.
Like his more famous contemporaries Michael Faraday
and Joseph Henry
, Page began his career as an astute natural philosopher who developed innovative work with natural phenomena through direct observation and experimenting. Toward the later part of their careers, the science of the day had moved on to a more mathematical emphasis in which these scientists did not participate.
Through his exploratory experiments and distinctive inventions, Page developed a deep understanding of electromagnetism
. He applied this understanding in the service of the US Patent Office, in support of other inventors, and in pursuing his own ill-fated dream of electromagnetic locomotion. His work had a lasting impact on telegraphy
and in the practice and politics of patenting scientific innovation, challenging the rising scientific elitism that maintained 'the scientific do not patent'.
Page's curiosity about electricity was evident from childhood. At age nine, he climbed on top of his parents' house with a fire-shovel in an attempt to catch electricity during a thunderstorm. At age ten, he built an electrostatic machine that he used to shock his friends. At sixteen, Page developed the "portable electrophorus," which served as the foundation for his first published article in the American Journal of Science(Page, 1834).
Other early interests, including botany
, entomology
(Page, 1836b), and floriculture
, contributed to his scientific training and later avocations.
After graduating from medical school, Page continued to reside in his parents' Salem home and opened a small medical practice. In a well-stocked lab that he set up there, he experimented with electricity, demonstrated effects that no one had observed before, and improvised original apparatus that amplified these effects.
When his father retired from a successful career as a sea captain in trade with East India, Page joined his family in relocating to rural Virginia outside Washington DC.
Page married Priscilla Sewall Webster in 1844. Priscilla was the younger sister of the wife of a Washington physician, Harvey Lindsly, who was among Page's colleagues. One son died in infancy. The couple brought up three sons and two daughters. Their oldest daughter, Emelyn or Emmie, died less than a year before Page's own death. Their youngest son, Harvey Lindsly Page (1859-1934), was named for his uncle. He was a famous American architect and inventor, of San Antonio, Texas
. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa75
from 1828–1832, studying chemistry under Professor John White Webster. A classmate at Salem Latin School who also attended college and medical school with him, Henry Wheatland described Page as popular, fun-loving, athletic, a fine singer and "a loved companion". Page participated in organizing a college chemical club where he demonstrated electricity and other phenomena. After receiving an M.D. from Harvard Medical School
in 1836, he practiced medicine and gave public lectures on chemistry in Salem .
When Page moved to northern Virginia in 1838, he continued his experimental research and set up a medical practice which he sustained for several years.
Page served as a patent examiner in the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C. for two periods: 1842-1852 and 1861-1868. He became senior patent examiner during his first term. During the years intervening, he took up a business as a patent agent or solicitor to help other inventors secure patents, established and edited the short-lived The American Polytechnic Journal, and pursued his own interests in electromagnetism, floriculture and other areas. As a patent agent, Page handled up to 50 successful patents a year, including patents for Eben Norton Horsford
, Walter Hunt
and others. Page's 1861 return to the Patent Agency as an examiner occurred in the wake of numerous dismissals of patent office employees under the new Administration of Abraham Lincoln
.
Page figured as a key witness in the Morse v. O'Reilly telegraph lawsuit of 1848. However, when Morse sought an extension of his patent on telegraph apparatus twelve years later, Page refuted Morse's role as inventor and was perhaps influential in the extensions' denial.
From 1844-1849, Page was Professor of Chemistry and [Pharmacy] in the Medical Department at Columbian College in Washington, D.C. (presently George Washington University
).
He held other public roles such as that of advising the choice of stone to be used in constructing the Smithsonian Institution
and the Washington Monument
to the committees in charge of these projects.
Throughout his life, Page published more than one-hundred articles over the course of three distinct periods: the late 1830s, the mid-1840s, and the early 1850s. The first period (1837–1840) was especially crucial in developing his analytic skills. Over 40 of his articles appeared in the American Journal of Science edited by Benjamin Silliman
; some of these were reprinted at the time in William Sturgeon
’s Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry printed in Great Britain. The Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers (1800–1863 volume) records many of Page's papers, however this listing is incomplete, as is that provided in (Post, 1976a, p. 207-213).
was obtained from a ribbon strip of copper, spiralled up between fabric insulation, at the moment when battery current stopped running in this conductor. These strong shocks manifested the electrical property of self-inductance
which Faraday had identified in researches published prior to Henry's, building on his own landmark discovery of electromagnetic induction
. Page seemed to be unaware of
Faraday's analysis.
Page's innovation was to construct a spiral conductor having cups filled with mercury (element)
as electrical connectors that were placed at various positions along its length. He then connected one terminal from an electrochemical cell
battery to the inner cup of the spiral, and put the other battery terminal into some other cup of the spiral. The direct battery current flowed through the spiral, from cup to cup. He held a metal wand in each hand, and put these wands into the same two cups as where the battery terminals went — or any other pair of cups. When an assistant removed one of the battery terminals, stopping the current from going in the spiral, Page received a shock. He reported stronger shocks when his hands covered more of the spiral's length than where direct battery current went. He even felt shocks from parts of the spiral where no direct battery current passed. He used acupuncture
needles, pierced into his fingers, to amplify his sense of shock.
While Page advocated the use of this shocking device as a medical treatment, an early form of electrotherapy
, his own interest lay in its heightening of electrical tension, or voltage
above that of the low voltage battery input, and in its other electrical behaviors. Page went on to improve the instrument, giving it the name 'Dynamic Multiplier'.
In order for Page's instrument to produce the shock, the battery current had to be stopped. In order to experience another shock, the battery had to be started again, and then stopped. Page invented the first circuit breaker
s, or contact breaker
s, to provide a repeatable means of connecting and disconnecting the circuit. In these devices, electrical flow is started and stopped as a rocking or rotary motion lifts electrical contacts out of a mercury pool. An electric motor
effect is responsible for the continued operation of the switch.
Crucial to Page's research with the spiral conductor was his capacity to explore and question the unknown, where the physical effects were enigmatic and the 'received theories' inadequate. Page did not provide an explanation for what he found, yet he extended and amplified the apparatus and its unexpected behaviors. A recent reconstruction of Page's experiment corroborates the central role of ambiguity in his work, finding:
Page's publication about his spiral instrument was well received in the American science community and in England, putting him into the upper ranks of American science at the time.
British experimenter William Sturgeon reprinted Page's article in his journal Annals of Electricity. Sturgeon provided an analysis of the electromagnetic effect involved; Page drew on and expanded Sturgeon's analysis in his own later work. Sturgeon devised coils that were adaptations of Page's instrument, where battery current flowed through one, inner, segment of a coil, and electrical shock was taken from the entire length of a coil.
Through the input from Sturgeon, as well as his own continuing researches, Page developed coil instruments that were the foundation for the eventual induction coil
. These instruments had two wires. One wire, termed the primary, carried battery current; a shock was taken across the ends of the other much longer wire, termed the secondary (see transformer
). The primary wire was wound concentrically over an iron core; the secondary was wound over that. Page developed a deep understanding of the underlying behaviors. In Page's published account of his coil, he termed it
and its contact breaker the 'Compound Electro-Magnet and
Electrotome'. Page's patent model for this coil is presently on display at the National Museum of American History
.
In a subsequent experiment with a spiral conductor, Page mounted it rigidly between the poles of a suspended horseshoe magnet. When current stopped flowing in the spiral, a tone could be heard from the magnet, which Page termed 'galvanic music'. Thirty years later, Alexander Graham Bell
cited Page's galvanic music as an important precedent for his development of telephony.
An astute observer and exploratory experimenter, Page invented many other electromagnetic devices. Some of these involved the electromagnetic motor effect in original ways. Many prototypes devised by Page were turned into products manufactured and marketed by Boston instrument-maker Daniel Davis, Jr., the first American to specialize in magnetic philosophical instruments .
While consulting with Samuel F.B. Morse and Alfred Lewis Vail on the development of [telegraph] apparatus and techniques, Page contributed to the adoption of suspended wires using a ground return, designed a signal receiver magnet and tested a magneto as a source to substitute for the battery.
During the 1840s, Page developed what he termed the Axial Engine. This instrument used an electromagnetic solenoid coil to draw an iron rod into its hollow interior. The rod's displacement opened a switch that stopped current from flowing in the coil; then being unattracted, the rod reverted out of the coil, and this cycle repeated again. The resulting reciprocating motion
of the rod back and forth, into and out of the coil, was converted to rotary motion by the mechanism. After demonstrating uses of this engine to run saws and pumps, Page successfully petitioned the U.S. Senate for funds to produce an electromagnetic locomotive, based on this design.
With these funds plus personal resources that took him into debt, Page built and tested the first full-sized electromagnetic locomotive, preceded only by the 1842 battery-powered model-sized Galvani of Scottish inventor Robert Davidson. Along the way, Page constructed a series of motors, revisions of the axial engine having different dimensions and mechanical features, which he tested thoroughly. The motor operated on large electrochemical cells, acid batteries having as electrodes zinc and costly platinum, with fragile clay diaphragms between the cells. Page's 1850 American Association for the Advancement of Science
presentation about his progress impressed Joseph Henry, Benjamin Silliman and other leading scientists.
On April 29, 1851, Page conducted a full test, intending to run the 21,000 pound locomotive from Washington DC to Baltimore and back with passengers on board. Problems immediately arose. High voltage
sparks, resulting from the very effect Page had investigated with the spiral conductor, broke through the electrical insulation
of the electrical coils, resulting in short circuit
s. Many of the battery's fragile clay dividers cracked on starting up; others broke down subsequently. Page and his mechanic Ari Davis struggled to make repairs and keep the locomotive running. With some periods of steady running, the silent engine (by comparison to a steam locomotive
) traveled 5 miles to Bladensburg, Maryland
, attaining a top speed of 19 miles per hour. Page prudently reversed direction there, for what was an arduous, calamity-laced return to the National Capitol.
The failures of Page's electromagnetic locomotive test run were cautionary to other inventors who eventually found other means than batteries to produce electrically driven locomotion. Before Page began his attempt, work such as that of James Prescott Joule
had generated a general consensus among scientists that "the battery powered motor was a hopelessly impractical device". Page had disregarded those findings. He himself never gave up believing in the practical potential of
his design.
A century and a half after Page's locomotive, the technology of Battery electric vehicle
s is demonstrating applications in numerous transportation contexts.
, of Rochester New York, made these claims notorious by exhibiting in public and private settings, while collecting money from their audiences.
Investigating some of these performers in person, Page produced a book that exposes various means of deception they employed (Page, 1853a). He described his analysis of these techniques during a sitting with the Fox sisters. Each time a critical observer peered under the table around which the sisters were seated, the spirit rapping ceased; whenever the observer sat upright, the sounds recommenced. Page asked to have the spirit sounds displayed elsewhere than via the table. One sister climbed into a wardrobe closet. Page identified where her long dress (concealing a stick or other apparatus) contacted the wardrobe. Through his expert knowledge of ventriloquism, Page detected how this performer was misdirecting the viewer's attention away from the actual source of the sound while building expectations to suppose the sound came from elsewhere than the source. However the trick was "poorly done" and the girl could not control it so as to produce any spirit communication.
Going on to reveal other fraudulent practices, Page addressed the relationship at work between performer and audience by which both functioned as perpetrators:
Page's efforts to expose these frauds at their human roots stems in part from his keen concern for furthering the public understanding of science and their proficient use of its findings and benefits. In this undertaking, Page allied with contemporary Michael Faraday and other scientists throughout history who have sought to debunk the unscrupulous applications of pseudoscience
upon a willing and gullible public.
described above, Page's scientific undertakings brought him into public arenas where politics and controversy held sway. Eloquent, combative, keen-minded and persistent, Page made his commitments known. Increasingly, Page's self-chosen and sometimes self-serving commitments diverged from the norms of behavior sanctioned by society and the elitism of the emerging professionalist trend in science. The resulting tarnish to Page's reputation impacted him during his lifetime and contributed to the longstanding historical neglect of his scientific work and personal story, thereby reducing general understanding of the complexity of the American experience in science.
A tension early to arise in his career as patent examiner was that of the conflict of interest between the privileged information he had regarding applicants' patents, and his private consulting with particular inventors on the side. Following his appearance in the 1848 Morse v O'Reilly lawsuit over the telegraph, Page took a more careful stance in his role as patent examiner. Thereafter, he refrained from transmitting such privileged information to rival patent applicants.
However, the well-paid public post of patent examiner put the occupants continually under scrutiny by politicians, scientists, and aspiring inventors. Both Congress and the executive branch exerted control and influence over policy and practices in the patent office.
In the early years of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
, a patent examiner was expected to be highly trained, knowledgeable in all the sciences, informed on current and past technology. Page was an exemplar of this ideal.
As Page continued in the job, the number of patents submitted to the agency increased sharply, while the number of patents granted was the same or less, and the number of patent examiners was unchanged. Inventors seeking patents, becoming incensed about decisions made against them, coalesced into a lobby with a voice projected through the journal Scientific American
. This lobby advocated "liberalization" — more leniency in the granting of patents, giving the inventor the "benefit of the doubt"— and argued against the scientific research being sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution
under Joseph Henry.
Henry took a hard line, decrying inventors' "futile attempts to innovate and improve". The elite professionalized science that Henry was building up through the Smithsonian and other organizations treated as low status the having or seeking of a patent; patents were not considered a contribution to science. While Page set out to show that gaining patents was genuine scientific work, he fell out of favor with the scientific establishment. His friendship with Henry petered out, and Page was no longer held in high regard as part of elite science.
Page shifted in his position on the granting of patents. As an examiner of patents, he was scrupulous and fair. Through his own experience as an inventor and association with other inventors, he allied with their concerns. On his resignation from the patent agency, Page used the journal he founded and edited as a forum to critique and even lambast the agency and policies which he had upheld for 10 years prior.
Following the example of Samuel Morse, who developed the telegraph to commercial viability through assistance from federal government funds, Page sought a similar level of support for his electromagnetically powered locomotive. He found a political ally in Thomas Hart Benton, senator from Missouri. Benton's passionate rhetoric on behalf of Page's vision was instrumental in securing unanimous support for a Senate allocation of $20,000 to fund Page's project through the Department of Navy. By the end of that year (1849), Page reported to the Navy that he was collaborating on the project with a mechanic, Ari Davis, the brother of Daniel Davis Jr., but had nothing yet to show. In print, inventor Thomas Davenport (inventor) challenged the expenditure of public funds on Page's project, claiming that motors he had already invented and built were equal to the task. Page defused that objection by publishing a statement about his unique device.
More troubles ensued for the project. Running low on cash, Page asked for more. Speaking in the Senate in the summer of 1850, Benton presented Page's attainment of a force an order of magnitude greater than what the same battery had output under his initial trials. Benton upped the stakes by requesting funds for Page to develop an electromagnetically powered ship of war. This second petition met with serious opposition in the Senate. Senator Henry Stuart Foote countered that Page had not proved substantial progress or benefits from his work. Senator Jefferson Finis Davis objected to the appropriation of government funds to one inventor, while
other inventors such as Thomas Davenport went unsupported. Both the US Senate and House nixed any further funds for Page's project. In order to prepare the locomotive for its 1851 trial run, Page went over $6000 into debt. In the wake of the failed public test of this locomotive, Page faced a critical press. Gaining no assistance from the world of finance, he emerged from the debacle in "desperate straights, financially and
emotionally".
The American Civil War
wreaked a further devastating impact on Page's scientific work and legacy. In 1863, Union soldiers stationed in the area of Page's home, broke into his laboratory as a random, unprovoked act of violence. His equipment, inventions and laboratory notebooks were destroyed. Some other inventions by Page which he had donated to the Smithsonian Institution were destroyed by a fire there in 1865. As a result of these destructive events, very few of Page's handmade devices exist today. With little remaining of his experimental work and notes, Page's many contributions have slipped from the view of most historians.
Suffering debt, terminal illness and isolation from the mainstream scientific community by his last years, Page contrived one final effort to secure credit and status for his achievements. In 1867, he petitioned the United States Congress for a retrospective patent on his inventions of the late 1830s: the spiral conductor, the circuit breakers, the double helical coil. The granting of such a patent transgressed such policies as that an invention in widespread public use for decades can not be patented, and that an employee of the Patent office can not hold a patent. Page circumvented these policies by appealing to nationalism. To support his argument, he published anonymously a lengthy, closely researched yet self-promoting book titled The American Claim to the Induction Coil and its electrostatic Developments(1867b)..
By the 1860s, the induction coil was becoming a prominent instrument of physics research. Instrument-makers in America, Great Britain and the European continent contributed in developing the construction and operation of induction coils. Premiere among these instrument makers was Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff
, who in 1864 received from Emperor Napoleon III the prestigious Volta Prize
along with a 50,000 franc award for his 'invention' of the induction coil. Page maintained that the devices he developed in the 1830s were not markedly different from the induction coil and that other American inventors had filled in with improvements that were better than anything made by Ruhmkorff — and alleging that Ruhmkorff had plagiarized the coil of another American instrument-maker, Edward Samuel Ritchie
.
A special act passed by the U.S. House and Senate, and signed by President Andrew Johnson
authorized what was later dubbed "The Page Patent". Page died a few weeks later, in May 1868. Instead of dying with him, the Page patent went on to play a major role in the politics and economics of the telegraph industry. Page's lawyer and heirs successfully argued that the patent covered the mechanisms involved in "all known forms of telegraphy". An interest in the patent was sold to the Western Union Co; together Western Union and the Page heirs reaped lucrative benefits. Page's patent secured a life 'in style'
for his widow and heirs. Although he was no longer living, it figured as yet another violation, on his part, of the behavior code under the emerging professionalization of science of the day, under which science was to be conducted for its own sake, without accruing apparent political or financial gain.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
electrical experimenter and inventor, physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, patent examiner, patent advocate, and professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
.
Like his more famous contemporaries Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....
and Joseph Henry
Joseph Henry
Joseph Henry was an American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as a founding member of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a precursor of the Smithsonian Institution. During his lifetime, he was highly regarded...
, Page began his career as an astute natural philosopher who developed innovative work with natural phenomena through direct observation and experimenting. Toward the later part of their careers, the science of the day had moved on to a more mathematical emphasis in which these scientists did not participate.
Through his exploratory experiments and distinctive inventions, Page developed a deep understanding of electromagnetism
Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation...
. He applied this understanding in the service of the US Patent Office, in support of other inventors, and in pursuing his own ill-fated dream of electromagnetic locomotion. His work had a lasting impact on telegraphy
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...
and in the practice and politics of patenting scientific innovation, challenging the rising scientific elitism that maintained 'the scientific do not patent'.
Family life
Charles Grafton Page was born to Captain Jere Lee Page and Lucy Lang Page on January 25, 1812 in Salem, Massachusetts. Having eight siblings, four of each gender, he was the only one of five sons to pursue a career into mature adulthood. One of his brothers died in infancy. Brother George died from typhoid at age sixteen, brother Jery perished on an sea expedition to the Caribbean at age twenty-five, and Henry, afflicted by poliomyelitis, was not able to support himself. In writing to Charles Grafton during his final voyage, Jery expressed the family’s hope for his success: "You are the only classical Page in our book."Page's curiosity about electricity was evident from childhood. At age nine, he climbed on top of his parents' house with a fire-shovel in an attempt to catch electricity during a thunderstorm. At age ten, he built an electrostatic machine that he used to shock his friends. At sixteen, Page developed the "portable electrophorus," which served as the foundation for his first published article in the American Journal of Science(Page, 1834).
Other early interests, including botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, entomology
Entomology
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology...
(Page, 1836b), and floriculture
Floriculture
Floriculture, or flower farming, is a discipline of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of flowering and ornamental plants for gardens and for floristry, comprising the floral industry...
, contributed to his scientific training and later avocations.
After graduating from medical school, Page continued to reside in his parents' Salem home and opened a small medical practice. In a well-stocked lab that he set up there, he experimented with electricity, demonstrated effects that no one had observed before, and improvised original apparatus that amplified these effects.
When his father retired from a successful career as a sea captain in trade with East India, Page joined his family in relocating to rural Virginia outside Washington DC.
Page married Priscilla Sewall Webster in 1844. Priscilla was the younger sister of the wife of a Washington physician, Harvey Lindsly, who was among Page's colleagues. One son died in infancy. The couple brought up three sons and two daughters. Their oldest daughter, Emelyn or Emmie, died less than a year before Page's own death. Their youngest son, Harvey Lindsly Page (1859-1934), was named for his uncle. He was a famous American architect and inventor, of San Antonio, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa75
Career
Page pursued undergraduate studies at Harvard CollegeHarvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
from 1828–1832, studying chemistry under Professor John White Webster. A classmate at Salem Latin School who also attended college and medical school with him, Henry Wheatland described Page as popular, fun-loving, athletic, a fine singer and "a loved companion". Page participated in organizing a college chemical club where he demonstrated electricity and other phenomena. After receiving an M.D. from Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
in 1836, he practiced medicine and gave public lectures on chemistry in Salem .
When Page moved to northern Virginia in 1838, he continued his experimental research and set up a medical practice which he sustained for several years.
Page served as a patent examiner in the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C. for two periods: 1842-1852 and 1861-1868. He became senior patent examiner during his first term. During the years intervening, he took up a business as a patent agent or solicitor to help other inventors secure patents, established and edited the short-lived The American Polytechnic Journal, and pursued his own interests in electromagnetism, floriculture and other areas. As a patent agent, Page handled up to 50 successful patents a year, including patents for Eben Norton Horsford
Eben Norton Horsford
Eben Norton Horsford was an American scientist who is best known for his reformulation of baking powder, his interest in Viking settlements in America, and the monuments he built to Leif Erikson.-Life and work:...
, Walter Hunt
Walter Hunt
Walter Hunt was an American mechanic. He lived and worked in New York state. Through the course of his work he became renowned for being a prolific inventor, notably of the lockstitch sewing machine , safety pin , a forerunner of the Winchester repeating rifle, a successful flax spinner, knife...
and others. Page's 1861 return to the Patent Agency as an examiner occurred in the wake of numerous dismissals of patent office employees under the new Administration of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
.
Page figured as a key witness in the Morse v. O'Reilly telegraph lawsuit of 1848. However, when Morse sought an extension of his patent on telegraph apparatus twelve years later, Page refuted Morse's role as inventor and was perhaps influential in the extensions' denial.
From 1844-1849, Page was Professor of Chemistry and [Pharmacy] in the Medical Department at Columbian College in Washington, D.C. (presently George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
).
He held other public roles such as that of advising the choice of stone to be used in constructing the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
and the Washington Monument
Washington Monument
The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington...
to the committees in charge of these projects.
Throughout his life, Page published more than one-hundred articles over the course of three distinct periods: the late 1830s, the mid-1840s, and the early 1850s. The first period (1837–1840) was especially crucial in developing his analytic skills. Over 40 of his articles appeared in the American Journal of Science edited by Benjamin Silliman
Benjamin Silliman
Benjamin Silliman was an American chemist, one of the first American professors of science , and the first to distill petroleum.-Early life:...
; some of these were reprinted at the time in William Sturgeon
William Sturgeon
William Sturgeon was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical English electric motor.-Early Life :...
’s Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry printed in Great Britain. The Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers (1800–1863 volume) records many of Page's papers, however this listing is incomplete, as is that provided in (Post, 1976a, p. 207-213).
Scientific accomplishments
While still a medical student at Harvard, Page conducted a ground-breaking experiment which demonstrated the presence of electricity in an arrangement of a spiral conductor that no one had tried before. His experiment was a response to a short paper by Joseph Henry, announcing that a strong electric shockElectric shock
Electric Shock of a body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable....
was obtained from a ribbon strip of copper, spiralled up between fabric insulation, at the moment when battery current stopped running in this conductor. These strong shocks manifested the electrical property of self-inductance
Inductance
In electromagnetism and electronics, inductance is the ability of an inductor to store energy in a magnetic field. Inductors generate an opposing voltage proportional to the rate of change in current in a circuit...
which Faraday had identified in researches published prior to Henry's, building on his own landmark discovery of electromagnetic induction
Electromagnetic induction
Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electric current across a conductor moving through a magnetic field. It underlies the operation of generators, transformers, induction motors, electric motors, synchronous motors, and solenoids....
. Page seemed to be unaware of
Faraday's analysis.
Page's innovation was to construct a spiral conductor having cups filled with mercury (element)
Mercury (element)
Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
as electrical connectors that were placed at various positions along its length. He then connected one terminal from an electrochemical cell
Electrochemical cell
An electrochemical cell is a device capable of either deriving electrical energy from chemical reactions, or facilitating chemical reactions through the introduction of electrical energy. A common example of an electrochemical cell is a standard 1.5-volt "battery"...
battery to the inner cup of the spiral, and put the other battery terminal into some other cup of the spiral. The direct battery current flowed through the spiral, from cup to cup. He held a metal wand in each hand, and put these wands into the same two cups as where the battery terminals went — or any other pair of cups. When an assistant removed one of the battery terminals, stopping the current from going in the spiral, Page received a shock. He reported stronger shocks when his hands covered more of the spiral's length than where direct battery current went. He even felt shocks from parts of the spiral where no direct battery current passed. He used acupuncture
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a type of alternative medicine that treats patients by insertion and manipulation of solid, generally thin needles in the body....
needles, pierced into his fingers, to amplify his sense of shock.
While Page advocated the use of this shocking device as a medical treatment, an early form of electrotherapy
Electrotherapy
Electrotherapy is the use of electrical energy as a medical treatment In medicine, the term electrotherapy can apply to a variety of treatments, including the use of electrical devices such as deep brain stimulators for neurological disease. The term has also been applied specifically to the use of...
, his own interest lay in its heightening of electrical tension, or voltage
Voltage
Voltage, otherwise known as electrical potential difference or electric tension is the difference in electric potential between two points — or the difference in electric potential energy per unit charge between two points...
above that of the low voltage battery input, and in its other electrical behaviors. Page went on to improve the instrument, giving it the name 'Dynamic Multiplier'.
In order for Page's instrument to produce the shock, the battery current had to be stopped. In order to experience another shock, the battery had to be started again, and then stopped. Page invented the first circuit breaker
Circuit breaker
A circuit breaker is an automatically operated electrical switch designed to protect an electrical circuit from damage caused by overload or short circuit. Its basic function is to detect a fault condition and, by interrupting continuity, to immediately discontinue electrical flow...
s, or contact breaker
Contact breaker
A contact breaker is a type of electrical switch, and the term typically refers to the switching device found in the distributor of the ignition systems of spark-ignition internal combustion engines.-Purpose:...
s, to provide a repeatable means of connecting and disconnecting the circuit. In these devices, electrical flow is started and stopped as a rocking or rotary motion lifts electrical contacts out of a mercury pool. An electric motor
Electric motor
An electric motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy.Most electric motors operate through the interaction of magnetic fields and current-carrying conductors to generate force...
effect is responsible for the continued operation of the switch.
Crucial to Page's research with the spiral conductor was his capacity to explore and question the unknown, where the physical effects were enigmatic and the 'received theories' inadequate. Page did not provide an explanation for what he found, yet he extended and amplified the apparatus and its unexpected behaviors. A recent reconstruction of Page's experiment corroborates the central role of ambiguity in his work, finding:
Page's publication about his spiral instrument was well received in the American science community and in England, putting him into the upper ranks of American science at the time.
British experimenter William Sturgeon reprinted Page's article in his journal Annals of Electricity. Sturgeon provided an analysis of the electromagnetic effect involved; Page drew on and expanded Sturgeon's analysis in his own later work. Sturgeon devised coils that were adaptations of Page's instrument, where battery current flowed through one, inner, segment of a coil, and electrical shock was taken from the entire length of a coil.
Through the input from Sturgeon, as well as his own continuing researches, Page developed coil instruments that were the foundation for the eventual induction coil
Induction coil
An induction coil or "spark coil" is a type of disruptive discharge coil. It is a type of electrical transformer used to produce high-voltage pulses from a low-voltage direct current supply...
. These instruments had two wires. One wire, termed the primary, carried battery current; a shock was taken across the ends of the other much longer wire, termed the secondary (see transformer
Transformer
A transformer is a device that transfers electrical energy from one circuit to another through inductively coupled conductors—the transformer's coils. A varying current in the first or primary winding creates a varying magnetic flux in the transformer's core and thus a varying magnetic field...
). The primary wire was wound concentrically over an iron core; the secondary was wound over that. Page developed a deep understanding of the underlying behaviors. In Page's published account of his coil, he termed it
and its contact breaker the 'Compound Electro-Magnet and
Electrotome'. Page's patent model for this coil is presently on display at the National Museum of American History
National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. Among the items on display are the original Star-Spangled Banner and Archie Bunker's...
.
In a subsequent experiment with a spiral conductor, Page mounted it rigidly between the poles of a suspended horseshoe magnet. When current stopped flowing in the spiral, a tone could be heard from the magnet, which Page termed 'galvanic music'. Thirty years later, Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....
cited Page's galvanic music as an important precedent for his development of telephony.
An astute observer and exploratory experimenter, Page invented many other electromagnetic devices. Some of these involved the electromagnetic motor effect in original ways. Many prototypes devised by Page were turned into products manufactured and marketed by Boston instrument-maker Daniel Davis, Jr., the first American to specialize in magnetic philosophical instruments .
While consulting with Samuel F.B. Morse and Alfred Lewis Vail on the development of [telegraph] apparatus and techniques, Page contributed to the adoption of suspended wires using a ground return, designed a signal receiver magnet and tested a magneto as a source to substitute for the battery.
During the 1840s, Page developed what he termed the Axial Engine. This instrument used an electromagnetic solenoid coil to draw an iron rod into its hollow interior. The rod's displacement opened a switch that stopped current from flowing in the coil; then being unattracted, the rod reverted out of the coil, and this cycle repeated again. The resulting reciprocating motion
Reciprocating motion
Reciprocating motion, also called reciprocation, is a repetitive up-and-down or back-and-forth motion. It is found in a wide range of mechanisms, including reciprocating engines and pumps. The two opposite motions that comprise a single reciprocation cycle are called strokes...
of the rod back and forth, into and out of the coil, was converted to rotary motion by the mechanism. After demonstrating uses of this engine to run saws and pumps, Page successfully petitioned the U.S. Senate for funds to produce an electromagnetic locomotive, based on this design.
With these funds plus personal resources that took him into debt, Page built and tested the first full-sized electromagnetic locomotive, preceded only by the 1842 battery-powered model-sized Galvani of Scottish inventor Robert Davidson. Along the way, Page constructed a series of motors, revisions of the axial engine having different dimensions and mechanical features, which he tested thoroughly. The motor operated on large electrochemical cells, acid batteries having as electrodes zinc and costly platinum, with fragile clay diaphragms between the cells. Page's 1850 American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
presentation about his progress impressed Joseph Henry, Benjamin Silliman and other leading scientists.
On April 29, 1851, Page conducted a full test, intending to run the 21,000 pound locomotive from Washington DC to Baltimore and back with passengers on board. Problems immediately arose. High voltage
High voltage
The term high voltage characterizes electrical circuits in which the voltage used is the cause of particular safety concerns and insulation requirements...
sparks, resulting from the very effect Page had investigated with the spiral conductor, broke through the electrical insulation
Electrical insulation
thumb|250px|[[Coaxial Cable]] with dielectric insulator supporting a central coreThis article refers to electrical insulation. For insulation of heat, see Thermal insulation...
of the electrical coils, resulting in short circuit
Short circuit
A short circuit in an electrical circuit that allows a current to travel along an unintended path, often where essentially no electrical impedance is encountered....
s. Many of the battery's fragile clay dividers cracked on starting up; others broke down subsequently. Page and his mechanic Ari Davis struggled to make repairs and keep the locomotive running. With some periods of steady running, the silent engine (by comparison to a steam locomotive
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...
) traveled 5 miles to Bladensburg, Maryland
Bladensburg, Maryland
Bladensburg is a town in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The population was 7,661 at the 2000 census.Bladensburg is from central Washington, DC...
, attaining a top speed of 19 miles per hour. Page prudently reversed direction there, for what was an arduous, calamity-laced return to the National Capitol.
The failures of Page's electromagnetic locomotive test run were cautionary to other inventors who eventually found other means than batteries to produce electrically driven locomotion. Before Page began his attempt, work such as that of James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule
James Prescott Joule FRS was an English physicist and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work . This led to the theory of conservation of energy, which led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics. The...
had generated a general consensus among scientists that "the battery powered motor was a hopelessly impractical device". Page had disregarded those findings. He himself never gave up believing in the practical potential of
his design.
A century and a half after Page's locomotive, the technology of Battery electric vehicle
Battery electric vehicle
A battery electric vehicle, or BEV, is a type of electric vehicle that uses chemical energy stored in rechargeable battery packs. BEVs use electric motors and motor controllers instead of, or in addition to, internal combustion engines for propulsion.A battery-only electric vehicle or...
s is demonstrating applications in numerous transportation contexts.
Science and Pseudoscience
Comfortable himself in public performance as a popular lecturer and singer, being skilled in ventriloquism as well, Page was astute in detecting the misuse of performative acts in defrauding a gullible public. One class of fraudulent schemes prevalent at the time involved communications with spirits by means of rapping sounds, the motion of a table, or other such signs produced in the vicinity of the perpetrator-medium. The sounds and motions were attributed to occult forces and forms of electricity. The Fox sistersFox sisters
The Fox sisters were three sisters from New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism. The three sisters were Leah Fox , Margaret Fox and Kate Fox . The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their much older sister and others that they were communicating with...
, of Rochester New York, made these claims notorious by exhibiting in public and private settings, while collecting money from their audiences.
Investigating some of these performers in person, Page produced a book that exposes various means of deception they employed (Page, 1853a). He described his analysis of these techniques during a sitting with the Fox sisters. Each time a critical observer peered under the table around which the sisters were seated, the spirit rapping ceased; whenever the observer sat upright, the sounds recommenced. Page asked to have the spirit sounds displayed elsewhere than via the table. One sister climbed into a wardrobe closet. Page identified where her long dress (concealing a stick or other apparatus) contacted the wardrobe. Through his expert knowledge of ventriloquism, Page detected how this performer was misdirecting the viewer's attention away from the actual source of the sound while building expectations to suppose the sound came from elsewhere than the source. However the trick was "poorly done" and the girl could not control it so as to produce any spirit communication.
Going on to reveal other fraudulent practices, Page addressed the relationship at work between performer and audience by which both functioned as perpetrators:
Page's efforts to expose these frauds at their human roots stems in part from his keen concern for furthering the public understanding of science and their proficient use of its findings and benefits. In this undertaking, Page allied with contemporary Michael Faraday and other scientists throughout history who have sought to debunk the unscrupulous applications of pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
upon a willing and gullible public.
Controversy and Impact from Politics, War, and Patents
As with the challenge to spiritualismSpiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
described above, Page's scientific undertakings brought him into public arenas where politics and controversy held sway. Eloquent, combative, keen-minded and persistent, Page made his commitments known. Increasingly, Page's self-chosen and sometimes self-serving commitments diverged from the norms of behavior sanctioned by society and the elitism of the emerging professionalist trend in science. The resulting tarnish to Page's reputation impacted him during his lifetime and contributed to the longstanding historical neglect of his scientific work and personal story, thereby reducing general understanding of the complexity of the American experience in science.
A tension early to arise in his career as patent examiner was that of the conflict of interest between the privileged information he had regarding applicants' patents, and his private consulting with particular inventors on the side. Following his appearance in the 1848 Morse v O'Reilly lawsuit over the telegraph, Page took a more careful stance in his role as patent examiner. Thereafter, he refrained from transmitting such privileged information to rival patent applicants.
However, the well-paid public post of patent examiner put the occupants continually under scrutiny by politicians, scientists, and aspiring inventors. Both Congress and the executive branch exerted control and influence over policy and practices in the patent office.
In the early years of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
, a patent examiner was expected to be highly trained, knowledgeable in all the sciences, informed on current and past technology. Page was an exemplar of this ideal.
As Page continued in the job, the number of patents submitted to the agency increased sharply, while the number of patents granted was the same or less, and the number of patent examiners was unchanged. Inventors seeking patents, becoming incensed about decisions made against them, coalesced into a lobby with a voice projected through the journal Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
. This lobby advocated "liberalization" — more leniency in the granting of patents, giving the inventor the "benefit of the doubt"— and argued against the scientific research being sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
under Joseph Henry.
Henry took a hard line, decrying inventors' "futile attempts to innovate and improve". The elite professionalized science that Henry was building up through the Smithsonian and other organizations treated as low status the having or seeking of a patent; patents were not considered a contribution to science. While Page set out to show that gaining patents was genuine scientific work, he fell out of favor with the scientific establishment. His friendship with Henry petered out, and Page was no longer held in high regard as part of elite science.
Page shifted in his position on the granting of patents. As an examiner of patents, he was scrupulous and fair. Through his own experience as an inventor and association with other inventors, he allied with their concerns. On his resignation from the patent agency, Page used the journal he founded and edited as a forum to critique and even lambast the agency and policies which he had upheld for 10 years prior.
Following the example of Samuel Morse, who developed the telegraph to commercial viability through assistance from federal government funds, Page sought a similar level of support for his electromagnetically powered locomotive. He found a political ally in Thomas Hart Benton, senator from Missouri. Benton's passionate rhetoric on behalf of Page's vision was instrumental in securing unanimous support for a Senate allocation of $20,000 to fund Page's project through the Department of Navy. By the end of that year (1849), Page reported to the Navy that he was collaborating on the project with a mechanic, Ari Davis, the brother of Daniel Davis Jr., but had nothing yet to show. In print, inventor Thomas Davenport (inventor) challenged the expenditure of public funds on Page's project, claiming that motors he had already invented and built were equal to the task. Page defused that objection by publishing a statement about his unique device.
More troubles ensued for the project. Running low on cash, Page asked for more. Speaking in the Senate in the summer of 1850, Benton presented Page's attainment of a force an order of magnitude greater than what the same battery had output under his initial trials. Benton upped the stakes by requesting funds for Page to develop an electromagnetically powered ship of war. This second petition met with serious opposition in the Senate. Senator Henry Stuart Foote countered that Page had not proved substantial progress or benefits from his work. Senator Jefferson Finis Davis objected to the appropriation of government funds to one inventor, while
other inventors such as Thomas Davenport went unsupported. Both the US Senate and House nixed any further funds for Page's project. In order to prepare the locomotive for its 1851 trial run, Page went over $6000 into debt. In the wake of the failed public test of this locomotive, Page faced a critical press. Gaining no assistance from the world of finance, he emerged from the debacle in "desperate straights, financially and
emotionally".
The American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
wreaked a further devastating impact on Page's scientific work and legacy. In 1863, Union soldiers stationed in the area of Page's home, broke into his laboratory as a random, unprovoked act of violence. His equipment, inventions and laboratory notebooks were destroyed. Some other inventions by Page which he had donated to the Smithsonian Institution were destroyed by a fire there in 1865. As a result of these destructive events, very few of Page's handmade devices exist today. With little remaining of his experimental work and notes, Page's many contributions have slipped from the view of most historians.
Suffering debt, terminal illness and isolation from the mainstream scientific community by his last years, Page contrived one final effort to secure credit and status for his achievements. In 1867, he petitioned the United States Congress for a retrospective patent on his inventions of the late 1830s: the spiral conductor, the circuit breakers, the double helical coil. The granting of such a patent transgressed such policies as that an invention in widespread public use for decades can not be patented, and that an employee of the Patent office can not hold a patent. Page circumvented these policies by appealing to nationalism. To support his argument, he published anonymously a lengthy, closely researched yet self-promoting book titled The American Claim to the Induction Coil and its electrostatic Developments(1867b)..
By the 1860s, the induction coil was becoming a prominent instrument of physics research. Instrument-makers in America, Great Britain and the European continent contributed in developing the construction and operation of induction coils. Premiere among these instrument makers was Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff
Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff
250px|right|thumb|Ruhmkorff inductor250px|right|thumb|Tombstone of Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff on the [[Montparnasse Cemetery]] in [[Paris]]Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff was a German instrument maker who commercialised the induction coil Ruhmkorff was born in Hanover...
, who in 1864 received from Emperor Napoleon III the prestigious Volta Prize
Volta Prize
The Volta Prize was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801–1802 to honor Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist noted for developing the battery. At that time Alessandro Volta was summoned to Paris to demonstrate his great discovery before the French Academy of Sciences...
along with a 50,000 franc award for his 'invention' of the induction coil. Page maintained that the devices he developed in the 1830s were not markedly different from the induction coil and that other American inventors had filled in with improvements that were better than anything made by Ruhmkorff — and alleging that Ruhmkorff had plagiarized the coil of another American instrument-maker, Edward Samuel Ritchie
Edward Samuel Ritchie
Edward Samuel Ritchie , an American inventor and physicist, is considered to be the most innovative instrument maker in nineteenth-century America, making important contributions to both science and navigation.-Early life and career:...
.
A special act passed by the U.S. House and Senate, and signed by President Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
authorized what was later dubbed "The Page Patent". Page died a few weeks later, in May 1868. Instead of dying with him, the Page patent went on to play a major role in the politics and economics of the telegraph industry. Page's lawyer and heirs successfully argued that the patent covered the mechanisms involved in "all known forms of telegraphy". An interest in the patent was sold to the Western Union Co; together Western Union and the Page heirs reaped lucrative benefits. Page's patent secured a life 'in style'
for his widow and heirs. Although he was no longer living, it figured as yet another violation, on his part, of the behavior code under the emerging professionalization of science of the day, under which science was to be conducted for its own sake, without accruing apparent political or financial gain.
External links
- Daniel Davis Jr. Apparatus
- http://www2.kenyon.edu/depts/physics/EarlyApparatus/
- “PV Scientific Instruments: About Induction Coils”.
- http://www.arcsandsparks.com/aboutinductioncoils.html