Charles Grafton Page

At 56 years old, Charles Grafton Page physical status not available right now. We will update Charles Grafton Page's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Page worked in Washington, D.C., as a patent examiner for the U.S. Patent Office from 1853 through 1860. Page was a patent agent in 1853, 1854, and 1855 handling up to 50 successful patents a year. He processed patents for Eben Norton Horsford, a Harvard professor; Walter Hunt, inventor of the safety pin and sewing machine; Birdsill Holly, various mechanical devices; Theodore Weed, sewing machine mechanisms; Thomson Newbury, machine-tool attachments; John North, paper folding machines; Lysander Button, fire engine hydraulic paraphernalia with Robert Blake, who together created in 1860 the firm 'Button and Blake' that dominated the fire engine business in the United States for several years. Page was a patent counselor to friends like Ari Davis, who constructed mechanical apparatus and electrical devices for others and their inventions.

The American Civil War affected the Patent Office as much as the new administration of Abraham Lincoln did. The number of patent applications in 1860 was 7,653. In 1861, this dropped some 3,000 to about 4,600 applications. The office was required by law to be self-supporting but the commissioner under Lincoln throughout the war had a wake of dismissals. Sixteen examiners were authorized, however less than half that were filled by him. In addition in governing the department he demoted the examiners and paid them the salary for assistants. The amount of applications increased as the war went on and by 1864 was within 800 of the pre-war high and was over 10,000 in 1865. The examiners of the short staff had to handle three times that processed in the 1850s. Mindful accurate examinations were out of the question and a lackadaisical attitude came about to process the applications. Page passed nearly every application given to him to process, even without correcting the wording of the claim if wrong. Congress in time authorized a supplementary appropriation and the number of examiners was increased to twelve. However the examiners on staff were not paid any more and Page struggled to provide for his nearly dozen dependents on a monthly income of $150 (equivalent to $2,700 in 2021).

The time of the civil war was not a lucrative time for Page and in addition the Patent Office was partly converted to an army hospital so the environment around him was daunting. The war wreaked a further devastating impact on Page's scientific work and legacy. In 1863, Union soldiers stationed in the area of Page's home, broke into his laboratory as a random, unprovoked act of violence. His equipment, inventions and laboratory notebooks were destroyed. Some other inventions by Page which he had donated to the Smithsonian Institution were destroyed by a fire there in 1865. As a result of these destructive events, very few of Page's handmade devices exist today.

Page figured as a key witness in the Morse v. O'Reilly telegraph lawsuit of 1848. However, when Morse sought an extension of his patent on telegraph apparatus twelve years later, Page refuted Morse's role as inventor and was perhaps influential in the extensions' denial. Throughout his life, Page published more than one-hundred articles over the course of three distinct periods: the late 1830s, the mid-1840s, and the early 1850s. The first period (1837–1840) was especially crucial in developing his analytic skills. Over 40 of his articles appeared in American Journal of Science edited by Benjamin Silliman; some of these were reprinted at the time in William Sturgeon’s Annals of Electricity, Magnetism printed in Great Britain. The Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers (1800–1863 volume) records many of Page's papers, however this listing is incomplete.

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