WILLIAM BOWER TAYLOR. 647 



By special invitation of his cousin, Mr. William Ellis, who was in 

 charge of the navy-yard in Washington, he accepted the position of 

 draftsman in the yard February 17, 1853, and a few months later 

 became foreman of the engineer and machinist department. He filled 

 this position acceptably until his resignation, December 31, 1853, 

 receiving a letter from Chief Engineer Henry Hunt, U. S. 1ST., express- 

 ing "great regret in his leaving the situation wherein his services and 

 knowledge had been valuable and his deportment most gentlemanly." 



In May, 1851, he was appointed by Hon. Charles Mason, Commis- 

 sioner of Patents, to a temporary clerkship, and on the 1st of April, 

 1855, was made an assistant examiner in the division under Prof. 

 George C. Schaeffer, the eminent chemist, engineer, and general scien- 

 tist. Dr. Schaeffer used to relate of this appointment that, finding 

 himself in need of an assistant, he was told by the Commissioner that 

 a young man was in consideration for the place who seemed intelligent 

 and capable but spoke doubtfully as to his own qualifications for the 

 work. "Then please appoint him at once," said Dr. Schaeffer; "he 

 will be just the man I want." The augury was abundantly fulfilled, 

 and was the beginning of a cordial lifelong friendship between the two 

 men, amid various strong differences of opinion. Their debates on 

 matters of high interest were remembered as contests of giants by 

 their hearers. 



Mr. Taylor was appointed principal examiner on November 10, 1857, 

 in the class of firearms, electricity, and philosophical instruments. 

 His early legal education and practice fitted him admirably for the 

 position of examiner and enabled him for more than twenty years 

 fully to meet the requirements of an office which Commissioner Mason 

 declared should command the highest order of talent, "where all 

 learning connected with the arts and sciences finds an ample field for 

 exercise and questions of law that tax to their uttermost the abilities 

 of the most learned jurists;" and another Commissioner, Judge Holt, 

 said: "The ability and requirements necessary to a proper discharge 

 of the duties of an examiner must be of a high order, scarcely less 

 than those we expect in a judge of the higher courts of law." 



In 1873, the temporary position of librarian being vacant, Mr. Taylor 

 was detailed to this service, on account of his extensive information, 

 and was of great assistance to the examiners through his ability to give 

 them references to aid in making up reports of application for patents. 



The Patent Office library was indeed a grand school of instruction 

 and a mine of inexhaustible wealth for a scientific inquirer. Designed 

 as a collection for reference in the examination of applications for pat- 

 ents, in order to determine the question of novelty of invention, it has 

 grown mainly in the direction of technological publications, including, 

 full sets of the periodicals devoted to special industrial art and all the 

 more important treatises on machines, arts, jn'ocesses, and products, in 

 the English, French, and German languages. Besides this, there are 

 the records of foreign patents of inestimable value. 



