OBITUARY NOTICES. 
421 
ifications 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 Novem¬ 
ber 10, 1857, in the class of firearms, electricity, and philo¬ 
sophical instruments. His early legal education and prac¬ 
tice 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 de¬ 
clared 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 ex¬ 
tensive information, and was of great assistance to the exam¬ 
iners through his ability to give them references to aid in 
making up reports of applications for patents. 
The Patent Office library was indeed a grand school of 
instruction and a mine of inexhaustible wealth for a scien¬ 
tific inquirer. Designed as a collection for reference in the 
examination of applications for patents, in order to deter¬ 
mine the question of novelty of invention, it has grown 
mainly in the direction of technological publications, includ¬ 
ing full sets of the periodicals devoted to special industrial 
&rt and all the more important treatises on machines, arts, 
processes, and products, in the English, French, and German 
languages. Besides this, there are the records of foreign pat¬ 
ents of inestimable value. 
