Charles Grafton Page (January 25, 1812 – May 5, 1868) was an American electrical experimenter and inventor, medical doctor, 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'.Post, 1976a, p. 139
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 a 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."Post, (1976a). Quote p. 8.
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.Lane, J. H. (1869). "Charles Grafton Page". American Journal of Science, vol. 48, pp. 1-17. 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.Post, (1976a), p. 144-145.
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.Cavicchi, E. (2008). "Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment with a Spiral Conductor". Technology and Culture, 49, p. 893.Lane, J. H. (1869). "Charles Grafton Page". American Journal of Science, vol. 48, pp. 3.
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, D.C.Post,(1976a), p. 7
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.Post (1976a). p. 137,160.Lane, J. H. (1869). "Charles Grafton Page". American Journal of Science, vol. 48, p. 17. Their oldest daughter, Emelyn or Emmie, died less than a year before Page's own death.Post,(1976a), p. 63-5; 177 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.
Page pursued undergraduate studies at Harvard College from 1828 to 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. He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1836.
Career After receiving an M.D. in 1836, he practiced medicine and gave public lectures on chemistry in Salem.Lane, J. H. (1869). "Charles Grafton Page". American Journal of Science, vol. 48, pp. 2-3. 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.Post,(1976a), p. 44
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.Post (1976a), p. 46, 142-145.Lane, J. H. (1869). "Charles Grafton Page". American Journal of Science, vol. 48, pp. 1-2. As a patent agent, Page handled up to 50 successful patents a year, including patents for Eben Norton Horsford, Walter Hunt and others.Post, 1976a, p. 159. 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.Post, 1976a, p. 163-163.
Page figured as a key witness in the Morse v. O'Reilly telegraph lawsuit of 1848.Post,(1976a), p. 71-72. 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.Post, 1976a, p. 164-170.
From 1844 to 1849, Page was professor of chemistry and pharmacy in the Medical Department at Columbian College in Washington, D.C.Lane, J. H. (1869). "Charles Grafton Page". American Journal of Science, vol. 48, p. 1. (now 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.Post,(1976a), p. 12.
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). He died in Washington DC in 1868
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 shock was obtained from a ribbon strip of copper, spiralled up between fabric insulation, at the moment when battery current stopped running in this conductor.Henry, J. (1835). "Appendix to the Above". American Journal of Science. July 1835, 28, pp. 329–331. These strong shocks manifested the electrical property of self-inductance which Faraday had identified in researches published prior to Henry's,Faraday, M. (1835). "On the influence by induction of an Electric Current on Itself:— and on the Inductive Action of Electric Currents Generally". Reprint on Experimental Researches in Electricity, 3 vols., 1839, vol. 1, pp. 1048-1118. building on his own landmark discovery of electromagnetic induction.Faraday, M. (1831). "On the Induction of Electric Currents, First Series, read Nov. 24, 1831". Reprint in Experimental Researches in Electricity, vol. 1, pp. 27-32. Page seemed to be unaware of Faraday's analysis. Page's innovation was to construct a spiral conductor having cups filled with mercury as electrical connectors that were placed at various positions along its length. He then connected one terminal from an electrochemical 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.Cavicchi, E. (2005). "Sparks, Shocks and Voltage Traces as Windows into Experience: The Spiraled Conductor and Star Wheel Interrupter of Charles Grafton Page". Archives des Sciences, 58, pp. 123–136.Cavicchi, E. (2008). "Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment with a Spiral Conductor". Technology and Culture, 49, pp. 884–907.Page, C. G. "Medical Application of Galvanism"". Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (June 22, 1836) p. 333.
While Page advocated the use of this shocking device as a medical treatment, an early form of electrotherapy,Page, C. G. "Method of Increasing Shocks, and Experiments, with Prof. Henry's apparatus for obtaining sparks and shocks from the Calorimotor". American Journal of Science, vol. 31, pp. 137-141; reprinted in Annals of Electricity, vol. 1 (1837), pp. 290–294.Cavicchi, E. (2008). Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment with a Spiral Conductor. Technology and Culture, 49, pp. 884–907. 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'.Page, C. G. (1837b). On the use of the Dynamic Multiplier, with a new accompanying apparatus. American Journal of Science, 32, pp. 354–360.
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 interrupters, 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.