together with the inventive genius of his grandfather. 
He, too, ‘“‘was good, and had the gift of reason.” 
There was an instinctive urge in him to design, con- 
struct, and invent—particularly to invent; the story of 
his inventions is truly the story of his life. 
Price made the following statement to a friend in a 
letter dated July 15, 1926: 
When a boy I made several simple inventions, one of 
which was to enable my mother to shell peas by turning a 
crank. The pods came out of one hole, and the peas 
came out of another. 
His first employment on work of an engineering 
nature began in 1871 or 1872, and Jasted about four 
years. It was described in his scrapbook as “civil 
engineering, survey, sewer, and bridge work at New 
York city.” 
Possibly his association there with engineers made 
him aware of deficiencies in his knowledge of mathe- 
matics, because further notes in that scrapbook 
relating to the same period state in part: 
J. Hie Serviss’:. % 
mathematics and engineering, at Englewood, New Jersey. 
My cousin J. D. Probst paid him for doing it till I earned 
enough by my work to compensate him. 
taught me, for four years, higher 
During the beginning of that four-year period he had 
invented an adding machine that was used for several 
years, probably at the engineering office where he was 
employed. 
The training given Price by Mr. Serviss was no 
doubt responsible for his being able to qualify for 
his next three jobs as a land surveyor in the State of 
New York (1877), as an assistant engineer with the 
New York and Harlem Railroad (in 1878), and as an 
assistant engineer with the Mississippi River Com- 
mission (1879-96). 
During the 17 years he spent with the Mississippi 
River Commission, his irrepressible talent for in- 
In 1882 he 
invented the Price current meter, which will be 
vention was continually in evidence. 
discussed later, and in subsequent years he invented 
many devices for building levees and for protecting 
the banks of the Mississippi from erosion.* 
As though he felt remiss for not having invented 
anything of importance during the year in which 
he had worked for the New York and Harlem Rail- 
road, he conceived and patented a “Street Car Fare 
Box.” Patents for that device were awarded to him 
4An example of the Jatter is found in U.S. patent 528,891, 
dated November 6, 1894, which Price received for inventing 
a ‘machine for building embankments.” 
42 BULLETIN 252: 
in 1885 (319,333 on June 2 and 326,778 on September 
22). *“That box,” he later observed, ‘‘stopped horse- 
car drivers from stealing fares on many railroads.” 
It was the first of his inventions to be patented, and 
modern streetcars and buses still use his fare boxes. 
There can be little doubt but that Price’s fare box 
produced a favorable impression on officials of the 
Chicago City Railway Company, because from 1896 
to 1898 he held the position of chief engineer in that 
company. There, as one might expect, he brought 
forth a completely new series of inventions. Among 
“momentum electric car brake” 
for streetcars, which has been used extensively, and 
them were his 
his ‘“‘automatic railway track-testing car’ which, 
when moved at ordinary train speeds, produced a 
graph showing any defects that might be present 
in the tracks. In addition to the Chicago City 
Railway Company, the Northern Pacific and other 
railway companies have made much use of these 
inventions. 
His next employment was with the Peckham 
Manufacturing Company. As chief engineer there 
between 1898 and 1903, he improved trucks for rail- 
way cars of all types. 
snow plows for clearing railroad tracks; these were 
manufactured under the name “Ruggles Rotary 
Snow Plow.’ The following advertising claims were 
made for the plow: 
He also improved heavy-duty 
Strong, durable, and always ready. 
Requires fifty percent less power. 
No brooms to keep in repair. 
Cost of maintenance ninety percent less than any other 
plow. 
Works equally well in light or heavy snow. 
The only snow plow capable of removing deep bodies of 
snow. 
Patents, however, did not absorb all of Price’s 
attention. He was gifted with a spirit of adventure 
that occasionally refused to be suppressed; back 
in the 1880s, while working among the bayous of 
the lower Mississippi, stories were rampant about 
gold and other treasures that supposedly were buried 
there by the well-known pirate, Jean Lafitte. With 
the aid of an Indian guide who boasted of having a 
map that showed the location of Lafitte’s $10,000,000 
buried gold cache, Price took part in one of the 
numerous, fruitless searches for that treasure. 
When he was 50 the lure of gold again beckoned 
him, but this time to a more sophisticated adventure. 
To prepare for it, he attended classes in metallurgy, 
chemistry, and assaying at Columbia College in New 
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 
