attention to inventions as modern as drift-evaluating 
devices for airplanes. 
Price obtained over 100 patents on his inventions 
during his career. At least two of them were awarded 
after his death. 
to the excellence and practicality of his inventions is 
Perhaps the most eloquent testimony 
that contained in the following telegram, preserved in 
one of his scrapbooks: 
Webster, Mass. Nov. 8, 1904 
Mr. W. G. Price, Mgr. Elec. Truck Dept., 
Standard Steel Car Company, Pittsburg, Pa. 
Dear sir: 
We have operated for six months your truck 0-50; can 
find no defects in same; it rides perfectly. Cost of mainte- 
nance nothing. Braking attachments superior to any we 
ever had in operation. You may write any testimonial 
you desire and sign my name to same, also same for 
Mr. Meller. 
Yours truly, 
Signed: J. D. Potter, Supt. 
[The Consolidated Railway Company] 
Price’s success at improving street cars led him ard 
his son to play with the idea of designing a complete 
automobile. They did not go ahead with that idea, 
however, because Price had a strong belief that auto- 
mobiles would never be more than “‘just a rich man’s 
Moow bade 
plaything.” his grandson wrote 40 
years later. “Between the two of them, they could 
have built quite a car!” 
Large Price Current Meters 
Of all Price’s inventions, those that most held his 
interest and attention throughout his long engineering 
career pertained to his current meters. Four patents 
on such meters, scattered over a period of 41 years, 
were issued to him. He wrote numerous articles about 
them for trade and scientific magazines and took an 
active part in discussing them at such meetings as those 
of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the West- 
ern Society of Engineers, and the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, in all of which he 
held membership. 
The year 1879 was an especially eventful one for 
Price. That was the year when the Mississippi River 
Commission was established, when he found employ- 
ment with that Commission, and when he married 
Mary R. Kelley. 
Commission was at Plum Point, Tennessee, a loop in 
the Mississippi River opposite Osceola, Arkansas. 
There, under the general supervision of the famous 
His first station of duty under the 
engineer, James B. Eads, Price assisted in transferring 
44 BULLETIN 252: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM 



Figure 3.—Rop FLOATS SIMILAR to those used by 
Price at Clayton, Iowa, in 1881. (From Frederick 
Yancy Parker, “Mississippi River Gagings by Rod 
Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, 
United States Army—1913, vol. 5.) 
Floats,” 
the configurations of the Mississippi River onto a map 
of the United States. He also helped to determine the 
height, up to 10 feet, of sand waves which moved along 
the bottom of the river at a rate of “‘many feet per 
’ 
day.’ But most important of all, he helped to meas- 
ure the discharge of the river. Those were probably 
the first river-discharge measurements in which he 
ever participated. 
Those early investigations at Plum Point did not 
Before the end of 1879, the entire 
party was forced to evacuate the area and flee to St. 
last very long. 
Louis because an epidemic of yellow fever had broken 
out in Memphis. In an old syndicated newspaper 
article, Dr. W. A. Evans mentioned that epidemic in 
the form of a conversation between an old man and 
his grandson: 
I lived in Memphis in 1879. I saw the people stampede 
in wild flight when yellow fever comes. ‘There were less 
than 10,000 left in the city, and they stayed only because 
they could not get away . 
trying to escape the plague-stricken city 
stacked high with bodies of victims were driven to the 
. . guards shot down refugees 
. wagons 
THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 
