126 GEORGE HERBERT STOCKBRIDGE 



easy to manage at the same time that it gives its current 

 by the consumption of cheap materials, or as incidental to 

 some extensive chemical manufacture, his engine is ready, 

 we think, to perform a large part of the work done by the 

 steam engine. 



The central feature of Page's motor was the axial magnet 

 which, as we have seen, was invented by Alfred Vail. 



While a principal examiner in the patent office, Page 

 became professor of chemistry in the medical department 

 of Columbian college at Washington. In 1861, having found 

 that his anticipations regarding the success of the electric 

 motor were premature, he returned to the patent office and 

 remained there till his death in 1868. As an examiner in 

 the patent office, Page was debarred by law from protecting 

 his inventions, so that they went into wide public use without 

 his realizing any substantial returns in money. The public 

 use itself constituted a further bar even in case he should 

 have decided to resign his official position for the purpose 

 of securing a patent. By a special enabling act congress 

 permitted the granting of a patent to Page for his circuit- 

 breaker and induction coil inventions, at the discretion of 

 the commissioner. It appearing that no other statutory bar 

 would be infringed by the grant, he received his patent, and 

 immediately sold it to the Western Union Telegraph com- 

 pany for a considerable sum of money. A large amount of 

 valuable experimental apparatus which Page had stored 

 on his premises in the suburbs of Washington was unfortu- 

 nately destroyed in 1863 by a party of IXnion soldiers who 

 supposed it to belong to a confederate sympathizer. 



Page's services to science were ultimately acknowledged 

 in Europe as well as in America. Sturgeon wrote of him in 

 1850: 



"I know of no philosopher more capable of close reason- 

 ing on electromagnetics and magnetic-electrical physics than 

 Professor Page, M.D." 



But so far as the electrostatic coil is concerned, the proper 

 credit has never been given to him abroad. The memory 

 of Page's services to acoustics is still preserved in the name 

 'Tage effect" given to the musical sound resulting from the 



