In writing to Charles Grafton during his final voyage, Jery expressed the family's hope for his success: "You are the only classical Page in our book.

He held other public roles such as that of advising the choice of stone to be used in constructing the Smithsonian Institution and the Washington Monument to the committees in charge of these projects.

Over 40 of his articles appeared in the American Journal of Science edited by Benjamin Silliman; some of these were reprinted at the time in William Sturgeon's Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry printed in Great Britain.

His experiment was a response to a short paper by Joseph Henry, announcing that a strong electric shock was obtained from a ribbon strip of copper, spiralled up between fabric insulation, at the moment when battery current stopped running in this conductor.

[23] These strong shocks manifested the electrical property of self-inductance which Faraday had identified in researches published prior to Henry's,[24] building on his own landmark discovery of electromagnetic induction.

[27][26][32] Crucial to Page's research with the spiral conductor was his capacity to explore and question the unknown, where the physical effects were enigmatic and the 'received theories'[26] inadequate.

Many prototypes devised by Page were turned into products manufactured and marketed by Boston instrument-maker Daniel Davis, Jr., the first American to specialize in magnetic philosophical instruments.

Morse and Alfred Lewis Vail on the development of [telegraph] apparatus and techniques, Page contributed to the adoption of suspended wires using a ground return, designed a signal receiver magnet and tested a magneto as a source to substitute for the battery.

After demonstrating uses of this engine to run saws and pumps, Page successfully petitioned the U.S. Senate for funds to produce an electromagnetic locomotive, based on this design.

[49][50] With these funds plus personal resources that took him into debt, Page built and tested the first full-sized electromagnetic locomotive, preceded only by the 1842 battery-powered model-sized Galvani of Scottish inventor Robert Davidson.

Page's 1850 American Association for the Advancement of Science presentation about his progress impressed Joseph Henry, Benjamin Silliman and other leading scientists.

Page conducted a full test, intending to run the 21,000 pound locomotive from Washington DC to Baltimore and back with passengers on board, but problems immediately arose.

Before Page began his attempt, work such as that of James Prescott Joule had generated a general consensus among scientists that "the battery powered motor was a hopelessly impractical device".

One class of fraudulent schemes prevalent at the time involved communications with spirits by means of rapping sounds, the motion of a table, or other such signs produced in the vicinity of the perpetrator-medium.

The Fox sisters, of Rochester New York, made these claims notorious by exhibiting in public and private settings, while collecting money from their audiences.

Going on to reveal other fraudulent practices, Page addressed the relationship at work between performer and audience by which both functioned as perpetrators: The prime movers in all these marvels are ''impostors'', and their disciples, ''dupes''.

While the former are filling their coffers at the expense of the latter, they must often indulge in secret merriment at the credulity of their adherents, and particularly at the grave discussions of the learned clergy and others upon electricity, magnetism the new fluid... or the devil's immediate agency....

The instant the idea of the superhuman gets possession of the mind all fitness for investigation and power of analysis begins to vanish, and credulity swells to its utmost capacity.

The most glaring inconsistencies and absurdities are not discerned and are swallowed whole....[59]Page's efforts to expose these frauds at their human roots stems in part from his keen concern for furthering the public understanding of science and their proficient use of its findings and benefits.

[60] In this undertaking, Page allied with contemporary Michael Faraday[61] and other scientists who have sought to debunk the unscrupulous applications of pseudoscience upon a willing and gullible public.

Increasingly, Page's self-chosen and sometimes self-serving commitments diverged from the norms of behavior sanctioned by society and the elitism of the emerging professionalist trend in science.

The resulting tarnish to Page's reputation impacted him during his lifetime and contributed to the longstanding historical neglect of his scientific work and personal story, thereby reducing general understanding of the complexity of the American experience in science.

[63] However, the well-paid public post of patent examiner put the occupants continually under scrutiny by politicians, scientists, and aspiring inventors.

This lobby advocated "liberalization" — more leniency in the granting of patents, giving the inventor the "benefit of the doubt"— and argued against the scientific research being sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution under Joseph Henry.

Having had much to do with shaping policy from inside the (patent) office, he also played a crucial role in reshaping it from the outside(Post, 1976a, p. 151).Following the example of Samuel Morse, who developed the telegraph to commercial viability through assistance from federal government funds, Page sought a similar level of support for his electromagnetically powered locomotive.

Speaking in the Senate in the summer of 1850, Benton presented Page's attainment of a force an order of magnitude greater than what the same battery had output under his initial trials.

Suffering debt, terminal illness and isolation from the mainstream scientific community by his last years, Page contrived one final effort to secure credit and status for his achievements.

In 1867, he petitioned the United States Congress for a retrospective patent on his inventions of the late 1830s: the spiral conductor, the circuit breakers, the double helical coil.

To support his argument, he published anonymously a lengthy, closely researched yet self-promoting book titled The American Claim to the Induction Coil and its electrostatic Developments.

[37][81] Premiere among these instrument makers was Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff, who in 1864 received from Emperor Napoleon III the prestigious Volta Prize along with a 50,000 franc award for his 'invention' of the induction coil.