Talk:Charles Grafton Page

Untitled

I am commencing a major edit to the Charles Grafton Page entry. Many biographical facts posted there are in error. The discussion of his experimental contributions omits much. The section on controversies is inaccurate. I will begin to make these revisions. Anemonella (talk) 16:00, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Language

"Having eight siblings, four of each gender." Four of each gender would presuppose at least 12 siblings (masculine, feminine, neuter)! Or do you mean four of each sex? Gender tends to refer to social and cultural differences while sex refers to biological ones. Our prudish translations easily lead to nonsense. Chrysippo (talk) 14:45, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Charles Grafton Page/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 12:10, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:10, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Images are appropriately tagged. Sources are reliable, with one exception noted below; there are two links to researchgate but the articles there were published elsewhere.

• Mganga (2013) is a Weebly page; this means it's self-published, doesn't it? If so this is not a reliable source.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:57, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• You have a stray </ref> tag at the end of the listing of Christopher Long's information in the source list.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:00, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• We say Page "continued to reside in his parents' Salem home in Virginia from 1838" and also that in 1838 his father "relocated his entire family to Fairfax County in rural Virginia". Was Page's practice in Salem or Fairfax county? If he moved with his family, then "continued to reside" is a bit misleading. I see from the next paragraph that he had a practice in Fairfax County; did he also have one in Salem as we imply?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:23, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "he was forced to sell off his prized possession": suggest not making the reader wait to the next sentence to see what this is. Perhaps "His new career was not very fruitful and in 1840 he was forced to sell off his prized possession, entomological cabinet insect collection, to support himself. He ran an ad for it in Silliman's Journal, selling it for $400 (equivalent to $10,900 in 2021)."

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:35, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "throughout the regimes of Charles Mason (1853-1857)": presumably "regime" refers to the fact that these men were Commissioner of Patents. If so I would tell the reader that, but why do we need to know who was commissioner while Page worked there?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:46, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "Page was most prosperous as a patent agent 1853, 1854, and 1855 handling up to 50 successful patents a year": looks like this should be "...agent in 1853...", but why "prosperous"? Did the number of successful patents he handled affect his income?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:46, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "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 theories developed inadequate": Does this just mean he was a good researcher? If so I would say it that way, if we have a good source; it seems like vague puffery as it stands. Looking at the source it's Page himself though; we shouldn't be sourcing praise of him to his own writings. The next sentence, about the role of ambiguity, also seems a bit vague; do we really need this discussion?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 15:16, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• What is a "musical harmonic telephone"?

•  Done -- My career was as an electronic engineering technician and to me the reference (Prescott 1884, pp 402-427) describes the operation and mechanics of a loudspeaker and how it works off a coil of wire and a powerful magnet. I linked those words to Loudspeaker. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:24, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "Page invented many other electromagnetic devices as an astute observer and exploratory scientist experimenter": the second half of this is just praise; I would suggest cutting it.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:24, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "the first American to practice in magnetic philosophical instruments": what does "practice" mean here? Manufacture and sell? And what is a "philosophical instrument"? If this is what we'd today call a scientific instrument, I think we need to explain that to the reader.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:42, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• Not necessary for GA, but the "Scientific accomplishments" sections is quite long and would benefit from subsections.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:01, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "One was a mechanical vibrating interrupter (Figure 1)": there's no "Figure 1" label on the relevant image. Similarly for Figure 2.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:33, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "of the input wires of the other set of wires": looks like editing debris?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:04, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "resulting from effects Page later had investigated as problems with the spiral conductor": "later had"? If he investigated these problems later, why "had"?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:09, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "calamity-laced" seems a bit strong; it didn't work well, but nobody was hurt and it didn't crash.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:13, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• "were impostors and their disciples as pushovers": what does "disciples as pushovers" mean? And does disciples refer just to members of the public who believed them, or something more specific? It seems to be refer to just the gullible public, in which case I'd make it "were impostors, and that those who believed them were pushovers" -- or perhaps "gullible" instead of "pushovers"?

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 08:21, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• "The instant the idea of the superhuman gets possession of the mind all fitness for investigation and power of analysis begins to vanish, and confidence swells to its utmost capacity. The most glaring inconsistencies and absurdities are not discerned and are swallowed whole" This should not be in Wikipedia's voice.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 08:21, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• "Eloquent, combative, keen-minded and persistent, Page as a scientist made his commitments known." What's the value of this sentence? The first half is just praise; the second half is very vague -- commitments to what concerning what? Then the rest of the paragraph is vague too. Looking further down I think this is intended to summarize some of the subsequent material, but I don't think that's a good idea, or at least not if done so vaguely.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 09:52, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• "Page used the journal he founded and edited": has this already been mentioned? If so I missed it.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 09:52, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• At one point we say he got $30K for the electric locomotive from the government; at another we say it was $20K.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 09:52, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• Why are we covering the locomotive work twice, once in the science section and once in the controversy section? There seems to be quite a bit of overlap.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 10:48, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

• Similarly the "Page Patent" seems to be covered twice, once at the end of the controversy section, and once under "Personal life".

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 10:48, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for review. I get started on the issues.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:44, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

• @Mike Christie: All issues have been addressed. Can you take another look. Thanks. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 10:48, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

  I made a few more copyedits. Passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:12, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Source checking

Per recent discussions about sourcing at ANI for articles nominated by Doug Coldwell, and a conversation on Doug's talk page, I am going to check sourcing for some articles Doug nominated that I recently promoted to GA. I don't have access to some of the offline sources but do have access to some material through the Wikipedia Library.

• Sources I can't access: Post 1976, Malone 1834, Cavicchi 2008.

Sections checked:

• Early family life: no issues found.
• Mid life and education:
  • "studied medicine with Dr A. L. Peirson and the Harvard Medical School receiving the degree of Medical Doctor in 1836" in the article; the source has "studied medicine with Dr. A. L. Perison of Salem, and the Harvard Medical School", receiving the degree of M.D. in 1836". This is too close to the original.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• • "At Harvard College he studied chemistry under Professor John White Webster": not in the given source.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• • "After receiving a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1836, he practiced medicine and gave public lectures on chemistry in Salem": this was during his studies, not after he received his degree, and the source does not say it was a public lecture.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• • "In 1838 he went to Virginia and practiced his new medical profession for two years". The source has "In 1838 he went to Virginia and practised his profession two years", so this is too close to the original.

•  Done --Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:27, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• Career
  • "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". Almost none of this is in the source given, which doesn't mention Page at all, and talks about Button and Blake.

These problems relate to about half of the text I've been able to check. That's to say, most of the article material in these three sections is inaccessible to me because I don't have access to the sources. Of the remaining material, about half has problems. This is unacceptably bad. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

•  Done - Above is on page 159 of Post (1976). Referenced paragraph accordingly.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:05, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Continuing:

• Self-inductive coil
  • "While still a medical student at Harvard, Page conducted a ground-breaking experiment which demonstrated the presence of electricity in an arrangement of a spiral conductor that no one had tried before. 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, spiraled up between fabric insulation, at the moment when battery current stopped running in this conductor. These strong shocks manifested the electrical property of self-inductance which Faraday had identified in researches published prior to Henry's publication": the citation is confusing because it gives sections (and does so incorrectly in the bibliography) instead of pages. The citation is to a paper of Faraday's describing this phenomenon and supports almost none of the text in the article, and doesn't mention Page.

•  Done - Paragraph is referenced to Cavicchi (2008), page 893 -> which is at this link that shows pages 884-907 of article Charles Grafton Page's Experiment with a Spiral Conductor in "Technology and Culture" journal. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:33, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• • "building on his [Faraday's] own landmark discovery of electromagnetic induction": cited to an 1831 paper which does indeed seem to cover induction. This is probably OK, though a secondary source would be a much better way to cite this.
  • "Page seemed to have been unaware of the background of Faraday's research and the analysis that had inspired Henry to write his paper. Page had done his own experimentation to come to his own conclusions": the source has "He was unaware of the background in Faraday's research that had inspired Henry or of Faraday's analysis of the currents. Thus, he worked in an environment of the unknown, where what he did, observed, and wondered about were key to developing his experience." This is insufficiently rephrased.

•  Done Reworded to-> Page was not aware of Faraday's research on electricity that had inspired Henry to write his paper.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm unable to check much of the next two paragraphs.

•  Done - The next two paragraphs are referenced to Cavicchi (2005) Sparks, shocks and voltage traces as windows into experience: The spiraled conductor and star wheel interrupter of Charles Grafton Page pages 123-136. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:24, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• • "Crucial to Page's research with the spiral conductor was his capacity to do innovating experimenting with good results. Page did not provide an explanation for what he found, yet he extended and amplified the apparatus and its unexpected behaviors": sourced to "Through these pursuits, Page developed the expertise and workspace that provided the requisite resources for his groundbreaking experiments." This is OK for the first half, but I don't see anything in the cited page to support the second half.

• I'm confused -> what words do you mean by "second half"? --Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:36, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Stopping there for now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:46, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

• @Mike Christie: Tried to resolve the above issues as best as I could. Can you take a look at my work to see if it is satisfactory. Thanks.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:36, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

  Doug, I'll try to look at your edits, but will probably finish going through the article first, and that may not be tonight. Thanks for taking a crack at this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:18, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment

This article is part of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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