Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment with a Spiral Conductor

Abstract

In the 1830s, American experimenter Charles Grafton Page pioneered electromagnetism, developing instruments, experimental practice, and understandings that were foundational for nineteenth-century technologies such as the telegraph and induction coil. While a student, Page detected electricity in a spiral conductor where direct current had not passed and no one expected current to be. He felt bodily shock and saw sparks. This paper explores that experiment through historical accounts and my own reconstruction of it. Page opened up boundaries in the physical circuit and cultural outlook that others treated as closed. New possibilities emerged; by tolerating the ambiguity that accompanied them, Page improvised fluidly and was able to make further discoveries. In recreating his experiment, I encountered variable signals. Like Page, I developed lab techniques that generated unexpected effects and questions. This study shows how opening up physical and cultural boundaries brings to light investigative possibilities not apparent before, possibilities which can become entry points for further exploration.

Full text

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This essay describes details of one electrical experiment that Charles Graf-
ton Page conducted in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1836. This experiment—
involving spiral conductors and batteries—was an important step in the
development of the induction coil. Page’s experiment ignored barriers pres-
ent in modern science between body and knowledge and exemplified a
fluid and dynamic approach to knowledge that did not require or presup-
pose grounding in scientific theory. I explore Page’s experiment from sev-
eral angles, including historical accounts of the experiment, context pro-
vided by other accounts, and my own exploration of a spiral apparatus
Elizabeth Cavicchi, an instructor at MIT’s Edgerton Center, earned her doctorate in edu-
cation at Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the former Dibner
Institute. Her research focuses on the learning process, which she studies through her ex-
plorations of nineteenth-century experimenters, her students, and her own experiments
and teaching. Robert Post encouraged and deepened her study of Page. She thanks the
Edgerton Center at MIT for access to lab space and instruments, ongoing experimental
discussions with James Bales, Ed Moriarty, Anthony J. Caloggero, and Fred Cote, and
other assistance from the staff. Chen Pang Yeang and Markus Zahn discussed her exper-
iment and methods of analysis; Thomas Cavicchi responded daily to her experimental
struggles. Grant Suter, Lourenco Pires, and Wayne Ryan provided other technical sup-
port. Her understanding of Page’s experiment and replication developed through many
thoughtful discussions with Ronald Anderson, Michael Dettelbach, Abigail Lustig, Peter
Heering, Giora Hon, Evelyn Fox Keller, Richard Kremer, Frank Manasek, Ben Marsden,
Alberto Martinez, Arthur Molella, Philip Morrison, Giuliano Pancaldi, David Pantalony,
Martin Reuss, Wolfgang Rueckner, Mike Schiffer, Roger Sherman, Yunli Shi, Friedrich
Steinle, Klaus Staubermann, and Ryan Tweney. Comments from editors, reviewers,
Eleanor Duckworth, Kate Gill, Joshua Ryoo, Bill Shorr, and Chris Smeenk impacted the
essay. She thanks the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT
for the support that made this research possible. Alva Couch wrote plotting programs
and sustained her spirits throughout many uncertainties. This essay honors the memory
of Ronald Anderson, SJ, and Philip Morrison.
©2008 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040-165X/08/4904-0003/884–907
Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment
with a Spiral Conductor
ELIZABETH CAVICCHI

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using modern equipment. These accounts combine to provide a story of
science without barriers, a fluid attitude toward knowledge, and a sense of
wonder and curiosity that eventually led to the development of the induc-
tion coil.
Routine outcomes trivialize complex means: tripping a switch that
lights a room, we are oblivious to the electrical behaviors, technologies, and
history that make this outcome possible. By contrast, outcomes and means
merged confusingly in electrical experiments done early in the nineteenth
century. How an experiment occurred mattered as much as what hap-
pened. Experimenters were literally inside the experiments they devised,
even to the extent that their bodies conducted some of the electricity.
Charles Grafton Page worked resourcefully within this complex environ-
ment and made substantial contributions to instruments, experimental
practice, and how people understood electromagnetism.Page (fig.1) was still
a Harvard medical student when he conducted the 1836 experiment dis-
cussed here. With it, he detected electricity where no one had expected it to
be—his body. His bodily sensation of shock demonstrated its presence.
Inseparable from that surprising outcome were the innovative means by
which he probed electricity and expanded his research. Page opened up an
electrical circuit that others had treated as closed, and he did this in multiple
ways. Many possibilities emerged, both for experimental tests and for inter-
pretation. By tolerating the ambiguity that went with all these possibilities,
Page was able to continue noticing more. Thus he generated a broad base of
experience that served him well in his subsequent work as U.S. Patent Ex-
aminer, and in projects such as his electromagnetically powered locomotive.1
For us to appreciate Page’s experiment, it helps to recall what it is like
when ways and means matter, and outcomes are uncertain. I put myself in-
to such an environment by replicating Page’s 1836 experiment. My interest
was not to match his setup literally, but rather to engage with the phenom-
ena in ways that opened up experimental possibilities new to my experience
and that brought me into contact with ambiguity. Like Page, I found this
ambiguity to be productive in extending my investigation and experience.
Thus my own experiment paralleled the kind of experimental life in which
Page excelled.
There is little mention of Charles Grafton Page in accounts of nine-
teenth-century American science and technology. Perhaps part of the rea-
son for this is that standards for success in science and invention empha-
sized outcomes, status, and conformity with a code of behavior from which
Page strayed. This study looks closely at one experiment and provides an
1. Robert C. Post, Physics, Patents, and Politics: A Biography of Charles Grafton Page
(New York, 1976); Post, “The Page Locomotive: Federal Sponsorship of Invention in
Mid-19th-Century America,” Technology and Culture 13 (1972): 140–69.

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alternative view of his contribution. Page’s inventiveness with materials and
scientific thinking depended on his ability to work productively with ambi-
guity and uncertainty; whereas the author found this process to be critical,
the reader will need to adapt to it also.
Physical and Cultural Boundaries Involving the Body
in Experiments
Page’s 1836 experiment used his body in many ways.2He built most of
the apparatus himself; he set it up and revised its setup with his own hands.
To activate the apparatus, either he or an assistant lowered a battery con-
nector into a small cup of mercury. To find out what was going on, he
employed a range of bodily senses. Visually, he looked for sparks. Audibly,
he listened to their crackling sound. Qualitatively, he compared a spark’s
2. C. G. Page, “Method of Increasing Shocks, and Experiments, with Prof. Henry’s
Apparatus for Obtaining Sparks and Shocks from the Calorimotor,” American Journal of
Science 31 (1837): 137–41. All articles cited from the American Jour nal of Science are
available in the Proquest digital-resource American Periodical Series (APS) online.
FIG. 1 Charles Grafton Page. (Robert C. Post collection. Reproduced with
permission.)

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brightness with its sound intensity. Alternatively, he put his body into the
electrical circuit by holding metal handles that were connected to it. By this
means, he sensed shock in his hands and arms. Again, he qualitatively com-
pared the strength of the shocks that he felt when the experiment was set
up in different ways. When the shock became too feeble to sense with his
hands, he poked needles through the skin of his fingertips. The needles
connected to the circuit to apply shock to the fingers.
While Page introduced new kinds of observations involving the body
and the circuit, his use of the body reflected common practices for observ-
ing the electricity produced in batteries. When Italian investigator Alessan-
dro Volta announced his landmark chemical battery to the British Royal
Society in 1800, he used only his body to link its two ends.3Immersing one
hand in a basin of saltwater that connected to the battery’s bottom, when-
ever he touched the other hand to its top he felt shocks, whose painful ex-
tent ranged from the fingertips to his elbow (fig. 2). Volta tested the re-
3. Alessandro Volta, “On the Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting
Substances of Different Kinds,” Philosophical Magazine (September 1800): 289–311,
reprinted in Bern Dibner, Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery (New York, 1964),
111–31.
FIG. 2 Left: Volta’s alternating pile of silver (A), zinc (Z), and moist cardboard,
terminating in a saltwater basin where he placed one hand, while putting
the other at the top of the pile to receive a shock. (Source: Volta, “On the
Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different
Kinds,” Philosophical Transactions 90 (1800): 403–31.) Right: Volta’s sketch
showing how his hands made contact with the two ends of a double pile.
(Source: Volta, Le Opere di Alessandro Volta, vol. 1 [1918], pl. XXII, repro-
duced courtesy of the Instituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere,
Cart. Volt. J68.)

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sponse of every bodily sense to this new electricity. Applying it to an open
wound, his tongue, his eyeball, his eardrum, and the interior of his nose, he
felt pain, tasted acid, sensed light, experienced a frightening noise, and
smelled nothing. These sensations arose only when the circle between the
bodily part and the chemical battery was fully complete; any break or gap
in that circle stopped the electricity and consequently the bodily response.
Whereas Volta used the body to observe the physical property of the
electric “circle,”4others saw in the body’s response to electricity a venue for
exploring the senses and medical therapy. Germans Alexander von Hum-
boldt and Johann Ritter probed their body’s limits to extremes of electrical
stimulation by plunging electrodes into scalpel incisions, open wounds,
and the eye.5By contrast, medical therapies were intended to heal the body;
many disorders related to the nervous system were already treated with
electricity discharged by eighteenth-century friction machines.6When
voltaic electricity became available, it was tested as a treatment in similar
contexts.
In contrast with friction-generated electricity, the lower tension (volt-
age) and greater quantity (current) of voltaic electricity made it more dif-
ficult and risky to administer. The body’s skin has a high resistance to elec-
tricity that blocks low-voltage currents. To get around this resistance,
physicians cut under the patient’s skin in order to put the electrodes into
contact with receptive tissues. British surgeon Charles Wilkinson innovated
the more-humane placement of metal discs (attached to electrodes) over
wet skin.7The wide area of the discs and the moist surface combined to im-
prove electricity’s transmission into the body. French physicians employed
an alternative tactic of directly piercing the skin; this arose as part of their
efforts to reintroduce the Chinese method of acupuncture into Western
medical practice.8Since acupuncture sometimes felt like shocks, the French
interpreted its needle “as a true lightning rod” accessing the body’s inher-
ent electricity. They extended traditional practice by attaching a voltaic bat-
4. Volta, in Dibner, 120.
5. For the self-experimenting of Humboldt and Ritter, see Stuart Strickland, “The
Ideology of Self-Knowledge and the Practice of Self-Experimentation,” Eighteenth-
Century Studies 31 (1998): 453–71; Michael Dettelbach, “The Face of Nature: Precise
Measurement, Mapping,and Sensibility in the Work of Alexander von Humboldt,” Stud-
ies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Science 30 (1999): 473–504; Ro-
berto de Andrade Martins, “Orsted, Ritter, and Magnetochemistry,” in Hans Christian
Ørsted and the Romantic Legacy in Science: Ideas, Disciplines, Practices, ed. R. M. Brain
and O. Knudsen (Dordrecht, 2007).
6. Paola Bertucci and Giuliano Pancaldi, eds., Electric Bodies: Episodes in the History
of Medical Electricity (Bologna, 2001).
7.“Shilling”-sized electrodes are described in Charles H. Wilkinson, Elements of Gal-
vanism in Theory and Practice (London, 1804), 2:444.
8. Lu Gwei-Djen and Joseph Needham, Celestial Lancets: A History and Rationale of
Acupuncture and Moxa (1980; repr., London, 2002), 295–302.

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tery’s terminals to acupuncture needles that convulsed tissue intervening
between them.9While Page was in medical school, these techniques gained
notice in America. One physician wrote that “acupuncture is entitled to far
more attention than it has yet received in the United States.”10
Analogous to the bodily boundary provided by the skin, which has to be
transgressed to get electricity through it, other bodily boundaries are in-
volved in experiments—and sometimes transgressed during them—which
have cultural dimensions. In their edited volume Science Incarnate,Christo-
pher Lawrence and Steven Shapin offer biographical commentaries re-
garding the Western cultural convention of dividing knowledge outcomes
from the bodies and material processes that make knowledge, and ascribing
a higher status to knowledge than to the body.11 Under this cultural tradition,
investigators’ bodies impeded their search for truth. Ailments they suffered
were regarded as testaments to their oblivious immersion in nonbodily,
higher-status pursuits. Cultural archetypes about workers’ bodies reinforced
this image, such as the emaciated scholar whose affairs are wholly of the
mind or the rotund surgeon who attends to things of the flesh.12
These cultural conventions exerted real power on what people believed,
favored, and criticized in regard to the body, knowledge, and how body and
knowledge interrelate. As American science became a profession in the late
nineteenth century, the pursuit of science became self-identified as an elite
undertaking that was not open to all. The cultural mores by which scien-
tific status was conferred or removed functioned to widen the split between
“pure” knowledge and the base means of production (including the body).
In Suffering for Science, Rebecca Herzig describes a culture in professional
science that extolled and rewarded voluntary bodily sacrifice made in the
service of higher, disembodied truth.13 While the body was an inextricable
part of the investigative activity,its subjugated role demonstrated the sharp
cultural boundary between body and knowledge.
9. M. Morand, Memoir on Acupuncturation, trans. Franklin Bache (Philadelphia,
1825), 30.
10. Quoted in William Markley Lee, “Acupuncture as a Remedy for Rheumatism,”
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 14 September 1836, 85–87 (available through APS
online).
11. Christopher Lawrence, “Medical Minds, Surgical Bodies: Corporeality and the
Doctors”; Steven Shapin, “The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Dis-
embodied Knowledge”; and Janet Browne, “I Could Have Retched All Night: Charles
Darwin and His Body,” in Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowl-
edge, ed. Christopher Lawrence and Steven Shapin (Chicago, 1998), 21–50, 156–201,
240–87.
12. The actual situation might be otherwise: some researchers could be frail; others,
like Charles Darwin, might use their maladies to secure the solitude needed for work. See
Lawrence, “Medical Minds”; and Browne, “I Could Have Retched.”
13. Rebecca Herzig, Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America
(New Brunswick, N.J., 2005).

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The culture of science that developed in the decades after Page’s death
lacked the means to acknowledge the usefulness of a fluid relation among
body,experimental materials, and inferential thinking of the sort that Page,
Volta, and others practiced. Given the cultural boundaries then in place,
historians and scientists of this later era might not look for meritorious
examples among the work of experimenters such as Page. Lawrence and
Shapin argue that present-day science and history also function under cul-
tural boundaries that divide bodies from knowledge. However, today these
boundaries reflect a situation different from the late nineteenth century. In
their view, with the rise of expertise, boundaries that had privileged one
kind of body or bodily involvement over another are no longer (so) con-
trolling of what it is believed it takes to do a job.Any body will do,and there
is no longer a cultural value in denigrating the body’s role.14
Both physical and cultural boundaries protect and regulate the body’s
participation in experimental activity. Page worked fluently among and
through these boundaries in ways that others did not—and later often
could not. Page’s fluency in manipulating the boundaries between body
and experiment was one means by which he extended the possibilities of
his experimental work into new and fruitful areas.
Precedent Experiments by Henry and Faraday
Page’s 1836 experiment was a response to one that he read about in a
brief notice that appeared in the American Journal of Science during the
preceding year. It said that Princeton (then called the College of New
Jersey) professor Joseph Henry had produced a means of delivering electri-
cal shocks whose maximal severity was “not yet determined.”15 The device
was just a long wire or conductor with handles at either end, directly con-
nected to the terminal poles of a large single-cell battery (fig. 3, left). Any-
one holding a handle in each hand would feel a shock whenever the contact
broke between battery and wire. A spark also appeared at the spot where the
disconnection occurred. The shock and spark were greater if the wire was
coiled. Henry found that the shock was further intensified if the conductor
was a wide ribbon of copper wound into a spiral, instead of a coiled wire
(fig. 3, right).
Henry announced these results before investigating the behavior more
14. Lawrence and Shapin, “Introduction: The Body of Knowledge,” in Science In-
carnate, 15–16; and Shapin, “The Philosopher and the Chicken,” 45–46.
15. Alexander Bache composed an abstract (“Facts in Reference to the Spark, &c.
fromaLongConductorUnitingthePolesofaGalvanicBattery”)onJosephHenry’s
experiment and published it immediately in the Journal of the Franklin Institute (1835):
169–70, and in the American Journal of Science 28 (1835): 327–29, quote on 328. In the
American Journal of Science, Bache’s abstract was followed by an additional discussion by
Henry titled, “Appendix to the Above” (pp. 329–31).

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fully, because Michael Faraday of the Royal Institution in London had al-
ready published his work describing shocks that he felt when holding a wire
coiled around an iron bar.16 Faraday’s report had not mentioned Henry’s
prior, but rudimentary, observation of this phenomenon. Henry followed
up on his old finding by doing some new experiments, by which he came
upon the shock-enhancing property of the spiral conductor (fig. 4). An-
xious not to lose more ground to Faraday while at the same time acknowl-
edging Faraday’s precedence, Henry gave a talk and sent out a hastily pre-
pared abstract.17
Henry’s shock results were surprising in several ways. Volta had felt
shocks only while his bodily connection to the multi-cell battery was com-
plete—not when it stopped, as observed here. Volta found it necessary to
stack multiple cells (twenty or more) sequentially in order to feel a notable
severity in those shocks. The large single-cell batteries (called calorimo-
16. Michael Faraday, “On the Magneto-Electric Spark and Shock, and on a Peculiar
Condition of Electric and Magneto-Electric Induction,”Philosophical Magazine 5 (1834):
349–54.
17. Joseph Henry (later the Smithsonian’s first director) first observed the height-
ened electricity occurring when a coil’s battery connection broke during work with his
great electromagnet; see “On the Production of Currents and Sparks of Electricity from
Magnetism,” American Journal of Science 22 (1832): 403–8. Henry’s formal publication is
titled, “On the Influence of a Spiral Conductor in Increasing the Intensity of Electricity
from a Galvanic Arrangement of a Single Pair,” American Philosophical Society Trans-
actions (1837): 223–31. Henry presented his work with the spiral on 6 February 1835, but
his complete paper was not published until 1837.
FIG. 3 Left: A person holding both ends of a coil feels shock when the coil
breaks its connection to the battery. (Source: author sketch.) Right: Henry’s
sketch of his spiral, battery, and rasp interrupter. (Source: Henry, “Contribu-
tions to Electricity and Magnetism, No. III, On Electro-Dynamic Induction,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 6 [1839], 304, fig. 1.)

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18. Philadelphia professor Robert Hare constructed a massive calorimotor consist-
ing of many voltaic pairs connected in parallel, so as to be equivalent to a single cell; see
Hare, “A New Theory of Galvanism, Supported by Some Experiments and Observations
Made by Means of the Calorimotor, a New Galvanic Instrument,” American Journal of
Science 1 (1818): 412–23.
19. Michael Faraday, “On the Induction of Electric Currents” (24 November 1831),
in Experimental Researches in Electricity, vol. 1 (1839; repr. Santa Fe, N.M., 2000), 27–32.
tors)18 that experimenters in Page’s day used to observe electromagnetic be-
haviors ordinarily did not shock experimenters, even when current coming
directly from a battery went through their hands. Battery current from a
single cell was too low in intensity (voltage) for one to feel a shock. Faraday
interpreted the coil experiment as a variant on his landmark 1831 discov-
ery that stopping the current flow in one wire induces a brief current in a
nearby independent wire.19 The electricity that gave a shock after battery
connection broke was different from the battery’s output current. In Fara-
day’s view, when that battery current suddenly stopped, a momentary elec-
tricity arose in the wire coil, going in the opposite direction from the bat-
tery’s output. This new electricity had a high-enough intensity to shock
someone or to spark in the air.
Henry’s claim, that a spiraled conductor gave strong shocks, caught the
eye of twenty-four-year-old Page. Page improved upon it and sent his own
brief, four-page write-up to the American Journal of Science as a response to
FIG. 4 Left: A spiral conductor used by Joseph Henry. Upper right: A two-cell
voltaic battery used by Joseph Henry. Lower right: Close-up of the fabric
insulating the turns in the Henry spiral on left. (Source: National Museum
of American History; catalog nos. 181,540 [spiral] and 181,746 [battery].
Photos by the author.)

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20. Page (n. 2 above), 137; Post, Physics, Patents, and Politics (n. 1 above).
21. [Jonathan Homer Lane], “Charles Grafton Page,” American Journal of Science 48
(1869): 1–17.
“Prof. Henry’s apparatus.”20 He was unaware of the background in Fara-
day’s research that had inspired Henry or of Faraday’s analysis of the cur-
rents. Thus, he worked in an environment of the unknown, where what he
did, observed, and wondered about were key to developing his experience.
Page’s Experimental Instrument
Page’s lab was at his parents’ home in Salem, Massachusetts (fig. 5). He
had been fascinated by electricity from childhood. When he was ten, he
turned his mother’s lamp glass into a friction electrical machine (fig. 5, top
right). While at Harvard College, a charismatic young Page organized a
chemical club in which he lectured his peers on electricity.During his med-
ical school studies, he built and tested voltaic batteries at home.21 Through
these pursuits, Page developed the expertise and workspace that provided
the requisite resources for his groundbreaking experiments.
Page improvised his spiral using materials at hand. Lacking a spool of
copper ribbon, he constructed strips from flat sheets of copper, doing this
FIG. 5 Left: The Salem, Massachusetts, home where Page performed his spiral
experiments. (Photograph by the author, 2008.) Upper right: A homemade
glass-bottle friction machine such as Page might have made as a child.
(Photograph by the author, 2001.) Lower right: Plaques appearing on the
former Page residence today. (Photographs by the author, 2008.)

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22. On this method of configuring the sheet, Page wrote: “in this way the integrity
of the circuit is better preserved than by numerous solderings” (“Method of Increasing
Shocks,” 138).
23. Perhaps the composite assembly of the spiral’s length from separate segments
suggested to Page the possibility of using intermediate locations on the spiral for electri-
cal input.
by alternately cutting partway into each sheet from opposite ends and then
unfolding from it a single zigzag, 55-foot strip (fig. 6, left). The strip had to
be bent over itself at each reversal to make it flat. Page preferred this irreg-
ular construction to what he saw as the alternative: soldering potentially
fallible joints between many short segments.22 He joined the strips end to
end, wrapping the entire combined length in fabric insulation and then
winding it into a compact spiral. At 220 feet in length, Page’s first spiral was
more than double the length of Henry’s.
The distinctive feature in Page’s spiral instrument was a series of con-
ductive “taps” giving access to different points along the spiral’s length (fig.
6, right).23 At four unequally spaced places along its length, as well as at the
two ends, Page soldered a metal post; at the top of each was placed a thim-
ble cup filled with mercury, which was commonly used at the time by
researchers for electrical connections.
This design was innovative. Usually, each connector in an electrical
device connected to one pre-specified battery terminal to complete a fixed
circuit. In the circuits of Faraday and Henry, only the entire conductor (coil
or spiral) could be connected to the battery and body (fig. 7, left). To test a
longer (or shorter) conductor required substituting a different one. With
Page’s intermediately placed cups, the same conductor could bear current
along either all or part of its length (fig. 7, right). Positioning cups at dif-
ferent radial positions provided diverse options for connecting the spiral
with battery and body.
FIG. 6 Left: My diagram of the Page method of slitting a copper sheet from
opposite sides (arrows) so that it would open as a zigzag strip. Right: Side
view of Page’s spiral showing connector cups spaced across its length.
(Source: C. G. Page, “Method of Increasing Shocks, and Experiments, with
Prof. Henry’s Apparatus for Obtaining Sparks and Shocks from the Calori-
motor,” American Journal of Science 31 [1837]: 137.)

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24. Page, 138.
Page’s Exploration of the Spiral
While experimenting with the instrument, Page became aware of the
diverse experimental options that his design allowed. Intriguing new elec-
trical phenomena arose as he discovered and tested each option.
Page started by exploring the effect of extending the length of the spi-
ral through which current passed. Fixing a connection from one battery
terminal on the innermost cup (cup 1), he immersed the other battery ter-
minal’s connector briefly in the next cup (cup 2; fig. 8, left). On removing
it, he observed sparks. Next, he repeated the same procedure by first plac-
ing, and then removing, the second terminal connector from each mercury
cup in succession (cups 2 through 6). At cup 3, the sparks flared brightest
and electricity snapped loudest. As he went on to add in more segments (at
cups 4, 5, and 6), the spark and snap diminished. In a footnote, Page sug-
gested that if cups were soldered onto every turn of the spiral, it would be
possible to “accurately” determine where the turnaround in spark bright-
ness occurred.24
Setting up the apparatus to take shocks was more complicated than
watching sparks, and the comparative findings came out differently. Page
grasped in each hand a metal handle with a prong that dipped into a mer-
cury cup. Since his hands were occupied, an assistant opened the circuit by
removing the outermost battery terminal from its cup. Page kept one hand-
held prong in cup 1, where the inner battery terminal was placed and re-
mained. He placed the prong held in the other hand in each of the other
mercury cups in succession (cups 2–6; fig. 8, right). As the assistant raised
the terminal from each of these cups, Page experienced shocks of increas-
ing severity. Unlike sparks whose brightness peaked with half the spiral in
FIG. 7 Left: Henry’s spiral unwound; the shock is taken across the handles HH,
while the battery is applied across the same span. Right: Page’s spiral un-
wound; the shock may be taken across parts of the spiral that may differ
from the segment carrying the battery current. (Source: J. A. Fleming, The
Alternate Current Transformer in Theory and Practice [London, 1892], vol. 2,
fig. 1 and vol. 6, fig. 2.)

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25. Ibid., 139.
the battery loop, shocks strengthened as that loop extended out to the en-
tire spiral.
Page then had the insight to explore another set of experimental op-
tions. The battery’s connectors and the body’s connectors could be inserted
across different spans of the spiral, independent of each other. On testing
these configurations, Page obtained outcomes that startled him even more:
“curious . . . difficult to explain.”25
First, he put one battery connector at cup 1 and the other at cup 2.
While the battery current was confined only to flow (or stop flowing) be-
tween cups 1 and 2, he connected the handgrip to cup 1 and the other
handgrip to cup 3. When the battery connection broke, Page reported a
greater shock than if his hands spanned just cups 1 and 2, to which the bat-
tery was connected. This shock increased when he relocated the second
handgrip to the outer cups (cups 4–6; fig. 9, left), while leaving the battery
connectors positioned in cups 1 and 2.
Next, Page tried out the effect of sending the battery current through
longer spans of the spiral, such as from cup 1 to cup 3, or from cup 1 to cup
4 (covering half the spiral’s length). While the battery current was applied
in each of these configurations, he positioned one handgrip at cup 1 and
put the second handgrip at cup 3 (or cup 4) to take the shock. Then he tried
to feel the shock when the second handgrip was located at each of the outer
cups (cups 4–6, or 5–6) in succession. He reported that the instrument de-
livered its greatest shock when the battery current traversed half the spiral
FIG. 8 Sketches of top view of spiral. Left: Battery current is applied by one
wire to the central cup and by the other wire to each of the other cups in turn.
Sparks appear when either connector is removed from its cup. Right: Battery
current is applied between the central cup and each of the others in turn.
The handgrips are inserted into the same pair of cups. A shock is felt when
a battery connector is removed. (Source: author illustrations.)

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26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Page, who did not specify the dimensions of his initial calorimotor, followed
Henry’s preliminary notice, which was vaguely worded in recommending “one of Dr.
Hare’s Calorimotors”; see Henry, “Appendix” (n. 15 above), 329. Henry later stated that
he employed one pair of large plates having 1.5 square feet of zinc surface area (Henry,
“On the Influence of a Spiral Conductor” [n. 17 above], 224). See Elizabeth Cavicchi,
“Sparks, Shocks, and Voltage Traces as Windows into Experience: The Spiraled Con-
ductor and Star Wheel Interrupter of Charles Grafton Page,” special issue, Archives des
Sciences 58 (2005): 123–36. For more background on Page’s experiment and electrical
acupuncture, see Elizabeth Cavicchi, “Opening the Circuit to the Body, More Options,
and Ambiguity: Charles Grafton Page’s Experiment with a Spiral Conductor” (February
2008), http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~cavicchi/publications.html.
(from cup 1 to cup 4) while his hands spanned it all (from cup 1 to cup 6).
By comparison, when battery current passed through the entire spiral
(from cup 1 to cup 6), its cessation produced a lesser shock for handgrips
positioned at cups 1 and 6. This observation gave Page grounds to propose
that spiral turns beyond the current’s path operated electrically by some
means that he termed “lateral cooperation.”26
Page was further astonished by what happened next. “Contrary to
expectation,” upon stopping battery current flowing through the inner
turns (cups 1 and 3), he felt shock while his hands spanned only the outer
ones (one hand at cup 4, the other at cup 6; fig. 9, right). This shock was so
feeble that Page amplified his sensitivity to an “extremely painful” level by
piercing needle conductors into his thumb and finger.27 This technique,
adapted from acupuncture, allowed Page to use a battery of modest size
rather than a great calorimotor like Henry’s that output high currents.28
Something was happening even in parts of the coil where no direct cur-
rent had been connected. With each new phase of trials, Page looked yet
FIG. 9 Left: Battery current is applied between cups 1 and 2. Shocks are taken
across cups 1 and 3 (4, 5, and 6) in succession. Right: Battery current is applied
from the central cup to cup 3. A shock is felt when handgrips are placed at
cups 4 and 6. (Source: author illustrations.)

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29. Page (n. 2 above), 139.
30. Elizabeth Cavicchi, “Experimenting with Wires, Batteries, Bulbs, and the Induc-
tion Coil: Narratives of Teaching and Learning Physics in the Electrical Investigations of
Laura, David, Jamie, Myself, and the Nineteenth Century Investigators—Our Develop-
ments and Instruments” (Ed.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999); Cavicchi, “Experiences
with the Magnetism of Conducting Loops: Historical Instruments, Experimental Rep-
lications, and Productive Confusions,” American Journal of Physics 71 (2003): 156–67;
and Cavicchi, “Nineteenth-Century Developments in Coiled Instruments and Experi-
ences with Electromagnetic Induction,” Annals of Science 63 (2006): 319–61.
31. J. A. Fleming, The Alternate Current Transformer in Theory and Practice,vol.2
(London, 1892).
32. [Charles Grafton Page], The American Claim to the Induction Coil and its Electro-
static Developments (Washington, D.C., 1867); Robert C. Post,“Stray Sparks from the In-
duction Coil: The Volta Prize and the Page Patent,” Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (1976):
1279–86.
more deeply into the spiral’s function as a conductor to uncover unex-
pected electrical activity. Electricity did not simply go from the battery’s in-
put point along the conductor to its output point, and it did not abruptly
stop when the battery connection broke. It was somehow active through-
out the conductor. Its intensity was differently expressed across various
portions of the spiral after the main current ended. Recognizing that these
behaviors did not agree with “the received theories of electromotion,”29
Page experienced ambiguity and confusion. He did not rush to mask that
confusion by speculating in print about an explanation; instead, his won-
derment and thoughtful curiosity acted as the stimulus to raise new exper-
imental possibilities, such as where to probe the spiral, and ways to amplify
its effect or his sensitivity to it.
I came upon the account of Page’s experiment in the context of study-
ing and re-creating the development of the induction coil, a nineteenth-cen-
tury instrument that produced electricity at high-enough intensity to spark
through significant air-gaps, having only a low-intensity input battery.30
Page’s spiral conductor is unique in the early phase of the induction coil’s
history.31 It is among the earliest devices to exhibit electricity of heightened
intensity in a conductive path that is beyond the path of direct battery cur-
rent. Page himself argued for recognition in this regard; at his life’s end in
1868, he successfully persuaded the U.S. Congress to grant him a retroactive
patent as the induction coil’s originator, based on his 1836 spiral and subse-
quent inventions.32 In doing so, he ensured financial security for his heirs;
however, by seeking monetary gain for intellectual work, he transgressed a
cultural boundary and negatively impacted his legacy as a scientist.
Redoing Page’s Experiment
For me, Page’s paper is linked to a fascinating phase in the induction
coil’s development. Evidence of new, complex phenomena emerged inter-

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33. Cavicchi, “Nineteenth-Century Developments”; Wilhelm Hackmann, “The In-
duction Coil in Medicine and Physics: 1835–1877,” in Studies in the History of Scientific
Instruments, ed. C. Blondel et al. (London, 1989), 235–50.
34. Friedrich Steinle, “Entering New Fields: Exploratory Uses of Experimentation,”
Philosophy of Science 64 (1996): S65–S74; Neil Ribe and Friedrich Steinle, “Exploratory
Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory,” Physics Today (July 2002): 43–49.
For related discussions of Faraday’s exploratory work, see David Gooding, Experiment
and the Making of Meaning: Human Agency in Scientific Observation and Experiment
(Dordrecht, 1990); Elizabeth Cavicchi, “Faraday and Piaget: Experimenting in Relation
with the World,” Perspectives on Science 14 (2006): 66–96.
35. See “The Replication Method in History of Science,” special issue, Archives des
Sciences 58 (2005), especially: Jan Lacki, “Editorial,” 93–95; Peter Heering and Christian
Sichau, “Instruments and Experiments between the Laboratory and the Museum,” 97–
112; Cavicchi, “Sparks, Shocks, and Voltage Traces” (n. 28 above); and Ryan Tweney, “On
Replicating Faraday: Experiencing Historical Procedures in Science,” 137–48.
36. Klaus Staubermann, “Controlling Vision—the Photometry of Karl Friedrich
Zöllner” (Ph.D. diss., Darwin College, Cambridge University, 1998); and Staubermann,
Astronomers at Work: A Study of the Replicability of 19th-Century Astronomical Practice
(Frankfurt am Main, 2007).
actively as investigators revised their experiments and instruments in re-
sponse to what they found.33 Being flexible while experimenting facilitates
notice of further physical behaviors that are unexpected, such as when Page
took shocks from cups 4 and 6 that were outside the battery current’s path.
Historians have described similar experiences in early electromagnetism
research dating from around 1820. In accounts of investigations done by
André-Marie Ampère and Faraday during that period, Friedrich Steinle
identified characteristics of “exploratory experimentation,” where an inter-
linked process of experiment and thought evolves without explicit theory.34
Page’s experiment exemplifies this process of exploration in the context of
probing the electrical response of his spiral conductor.
Since exploration within an environment of ambiguous behaviors is
distinctive in Page’s work, my effort to understand and redo his experiment
also needed to reflect that by some means. A reproduction of Page’s exper-
iment that took an unequivocal path to match his outcomes would not rep-
resent the core of what he did.
Redoing an experiment for purposes other than literal verification of
facts is a valid method of historical research,35 but not all experiments are
alike. For historians practicing this method, ambiguity and other features
distinctive to an experiment always arise in the course of redoing it. These
features engender insights, whether or not the historical project produces
more clarity about the specifics. For example, Klaus Staubermann found it
more challenging to perform bodily motions in the complete darkness that
is critical for astronomical observation than to operate the nineteenth-cen-
tury telescope photometer that was the formal topic of his study.36 Peter
Heering discerned differences in the underlying context of experiments
conducted during different historical periods: while Enlightenment-era

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37. Peter Heering, “Educating and Entertaining: Using Enlightenment Experiments
for Teacher Training,” in Constructing Scientific Understanding through Contextual Teach-
ing, ed. Peter Heering and Daniel Osewold (Berlin, 2007), 65–81; Heering,“Weighing the
Heat: The Replication of the Experiments with the Ice-Calorimeter of Lavoisier and La-
place,” in Lavoisier in Perspective, ed. Marco Beretta (Munich, 2005), 27–42.
38. For more details about my experiment, see Cavicchi, “Sparks, Shocks, and Volt-
age Traces,” and “Opening the Circuit to the Body” (n. 28 above).
experiments promoted audience participation and entertainment, in sub-
sequent periods the emphasis in experimenting shifted toward precise in-
strumental work aimed at verifying theories.37 Staubermann and Heering
had to adapt their understanding of these experiments while repeating
them. Both for the historian-experimenter and for the original investiga-
tors, having a flexible outlook is a key asset in recognizing the relevance of
features that may not be explicit and could be unexpected.
My Spiral Experiment
As with these prior studies, my outlook continually evolved during my
project to redo Page’s experiment. Initially, I assumed that it would be
straightforward to demonstrate his basic electrical findings. It was not. In
trying to uncover more about what was going on, I worked with techniques
and instruments that were not available in his day and were new to me as
well. My own instrument, and the questions that arose for me in using it,
became a focus that set off many series of experimental tests. While my ex-
periment seemed to diverge from what Page literally did, it echoed the
experience of working in ambiguity and opening up multiple options for
investigation.38
While Page worked in a lab stocked with homemade apparatuses, I
worked in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Edgerton Center
with equipment that I either assembled or learned to use during my proj-
ect. Just as Page started from materials that were on hand, similarly,I started
with items readily accessible today. Page constructed an electrical analog to
Henry’s spiral out of copper sheet; I devised an analog to Page’s spiral from
copper tape intended as edging for panes of stained glass (fig. 10). This con-
ductive foil spirals outward in an unbroken path; its paper backing insulates
successive turns from each other, similar to the effect of Page’s fabric. At
intervals along the spiral, I soldered copper strips like Page’s cup supports.
In place of mercury cups, I used alligator clips to connect my spiral to other
apparatuses. Where Page broke the flow of battery current by removing a
terminal from a mercury cup, I initially used a mechanical switch, and later
tried many other techniques. I substituted two D-size flashlight batteries or
a three-volt power supply for Page’s calorimotor.
Whereas Page relied on his bodily sense of shock to detect electricity, I
did not. The boundaries regarding the body’s use in lab work are defined

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39. On safety issues related to shock, see William Butterfield, “Electric Shock—
Safety Factors when Used for the Aversive Conditioning of Humans,” Behavior Therapy
6 (1975): 98–110. For U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assessments of health risks
and policies associated with mercury, see http://www.epa.gov/mercury/effects.htm
(accessed 17 July 2008).
40. The Bakken Museum of Electricity and Life in Minneapolis provided mercury
for my demonstration talk, “Finding the Body—and Ambiguity—in the Circuit: Histor-
ical and Reconstructive Experiments with a Spiraled Conductor,”10 December 2003; see
http://www.thebakken.org/research/Cavicchi-talk.htm (accessed 17 July 2008). I thank
Ellen Kuffeld, Elizabeth Ihrig, and David Rhees for support in my presentation on the
Page spiral and my related studies at the Bakken Museum.
41. I worked with the following storage oscilloscopes in successive phases of my
study: HP 54600B, Lecroy 9450A, and HP Infinium 54810A. I used a high-voltage probe
(Textronix P6015) to protect these instruments from high voltages induced in my circuits.
differently in today’s culture from those during Page’s time. Bodily electric
shock and liquid-mercury exposure are now known to be dangerous and
are treated as safety hazards.39 While I have sometimes experienced shock
accidentally and once had the opportunity to use liquid mercury,40 I do not
encounter these risks routinely. Similarly, I worked with much-lower elec-
tric currents than the amperes put out by Page’s calorimotors. Since my spi-
rals were much smaller in scale than Page’s, these lower (and safer) currents
were adequate to produce interesting electrical effects.
In analog to the function that Page’s body played in detecting electric-
ity, I used a storage oscilloscope.41 This instrument displays the signal volt-
FIG. 10 Several spirals used in my project, made from copper tape used
in stained-glass art. (Photograph by Omari Stephens, reproduced with
permission.)

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age picked up by its probes as a trace on a two-dimensional screen, where
voltage is on the vertical axis and time is on the horizontal one (fig. 11). As
the trace is repeatedly redrawn across the screen, its excursions up and
down indicate changes in voltage occurring during the time interval repre-
sented by the horizontal axis. This timescale can be varied across many
orders of magnitude, as can the voltage scale applied to the vertical axis.
Signals that are stable in voltage appear as straight horizontal lines on the
screen; signals that occur only sporadically or in one trace, such as those
produced on breaking the spiral’s battery connection, are obscured by the
next trace unless a storage feature of an oscilloscope is used to retain it.
A typical trace produced within my spiral showed a voltage spike of sev-
eral hundred volts, followed by lesser peaks spaced microseconds apart (fig.
11, right). Treating this trace as a proxy for Page’s sense of shock, I inter-
preted traces showing greater excursions in voltage as representing circum-
stances whereby Page might have reported greater shock.
Working with these materials, I followed Page’s practice by connecting
a battery across part of the spiral and putting the oscilloscope probes across
that same part, or some other part (fig. 12, left). Upon disconnecting the
battery, I observed the trace and noted its peak value. Then I changed the
connections, switched the battery on and off, and observed the next trace.
In the first phase of my project, I sketched these traces by hand; later, I used
a digital-storage oscilloscope to save each trace into a computer file for later
analysis.
I expected that the voltage peaks of these traces would be greater when
the oscilloscope probe covered more of the spiral, and when the battery
connected more of it. But this kind of trend did not consistently appear.
Finding it hard to recall and compare the signals taken across different
FIG. 11 Left: Digital oscilloscope with display screen; power supply and function
generator are on top (source: author photograph). Right: A trace from the
oscilloscope, showing how the voltage (vertical) changes in time (horizontal)
when the switch opens (source: author screencap).

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42. Presenting 1MΩto the test circuit, the oscilloscope is designed not to perturb it;
however, I found that signals were affected (diminished) when two probes were applied
to overlapping parts of the spiral simultaneously.
43. See J. Patrick Reiley, Applied Bioelectricity: From Electrical Stimulation to Electro-
pathology (New York, 1998).
44. I varied the resistor’s value from a low of 330Ωto a high 560kΩ. These values
correspond to those tabulated for the human body’s resistance to current: dry skin,
~500kΩ; wet skin, ~1KΩ; internal body length, ~400Ω. See, for example, “Biological
Effects of Electric Shock,” Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport
News, Va., General Electrical Safety 6200 at http://www.jlab.org/ehs/ehsmanual/index.
html (accessed 19 August 2008).
parts of the spiral, I tried using two probes at once, placed across different
parts; however, adding the second probe changed the signal on the first.
In discussing with others what might be going on, an overlooked differ-
ence between my circuit and Page’s emerged: What if Page’s body con-
tributed to the electrical behaviors he described? Oscilloscope probes pres-
ent very high resistance to electric current, but the body does not.42 Through
the confusion raised by my experimental outcomes, I came to consider that
the body might be an active part of the circuit, not an uninvolved detector
like the oscilloscope. In this way, my thinking about the historical experi-
ment crossed a boundary regarding bodies and circuits—between percep-
tion and participation—that I had previously treated as closed.
Having modern and safer means, I did not need to put myself into the
circuit in order to explore this possibility. I looked into various measure-
ments and models of the human body’s electrical properties.43 The simplest
model represents the body as posing a resistance to the flow of current.
This resistance is high for dry skin, low for tissue. To simulate this, I insert-
ed an electrical resistor into my circuit, across the oscilloscope probe (fig.
12, right);44 still, the voltage did not always increase where I expected it to,
and it was confusing to remember and compare subsequent traces.
For a time, I suspended experimenting with my spiral—experimenting
FIG. 12 Left: My circuit in which a battery connects across part of the spiral via
a switch, while a high-voltage probe from the oscilloscope connects across
another spiral interval. Right: The human-body model (such as a resistor) is
connected in parallel with the oscilloscope probe. (Source: author illustrations.)

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stalled due to unmet expectations; instead, I wound multilayer iron-core
coils having connection points at the different layers. When I connected the
battery and oscilloscope to these coils in configurations like those I used
with the spiral, the trace voltages increased over greater coil length.45
On resuming experiments with the spiral, I doubled its length, im-
proved connections, and employed a digital-storage oscilloscope.46 This
oscilloscope immediately transformed my data collection: values of voltage
and time saved from more than one trace could be plotted on the same
axes, allowing a direct overlay comparison among traces taken in different
trials. I used this method to compare the trace produced when a low-val-
ued resistor was in the circuit (like Page’s body) with a trace produced
without one (fig. 13, left). With the low resistor, the trace exhibited one
major peak—without the declining oscillations that characterize the trace
taken from that same circuit without the resistor.
The resistor affected the shape of the electrical signal when it was
included in the circuit, suggesting that the body plays an active part in the
circuit. The single spike of this resistor test corroborated with the narrow-
spike trace that resulted when a human volunteer put himself into my spi-
ral circuit where the resistor had been (fig. 13, right). However, while I
found that the human body affects the circuit, further tests showed that its
inclusion (through an electrical substitute) did not remove the ambiguity
that motivated my questions. I still lacked a consistent demonstration of
voltage increase when the probe covers more of the spiral’s length.
45. See Cavicchi, “Nineteenth-Century Developments” (n. 30 above), 346, fig. 14.
46. HP Infinium 54810A.
FIG. 13 Left: The light gray line represents the voltage induced across a part
of the spiral when the switch opens. The dark line shows the voltage induced
across the same portion of the spiral when a resistor (1kΩ) is put in parallel
with the probe. Right: The voltage trace produced when a human volunteer
connected across my spiral, in place of the resistor. The peak voltage is 300V.
(Source: author illustrations.)

CAVICCHIK|KPage’s Spiral Conductor Experiment
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47. For more description of the reconstructed spiral and wheeled switch, see Cavic-
chi, “Sparks, Shocks, and Voltage Traces” (n. 28 above), 131–34.
As I analyzed more data using the technique of plotting traces taken
from separate trials onto one graph, I ascertained more about the signals
that were giving me such confusion. Previously, I noticed that when I sim-
ply repeated an experiment without changing anything about the setup, the
voltage trace looked different. Now I collected a series of traces that were
produced when I changed nothing in the experiment’s connections, but
repeatedly closed and opened the switch that lets battery current into the
circuit, under what I thought were identical conditions.When I superposed
on one plot these traces taken from successive switching events, their peak
values varied over a wide range (fig. 14, left). This pronounced variability
contrasts sharply with the repeatable signals put out by my iron-core coils
when I activated them using the same battery and switch.
Whereas before I responded to the discrepancy between my spiral’s out-
put and that of Page’s by looking to a component—the body—that differed
in the two cases, subsequently I considered an element in common between
Page’s experiment and mine: the mechanical switch. With a mechanical
switch, electric contacts break irregularly so that each switching is different;
by contrast, electronic pulse generators produce events that are virtually the
same each time. I began investigating my spiral by both means.
I explored my spiral’s response to both mechanical and periodic stim-
uli in more than ninety lab sessions over five years. In doing this, I con-
structed new apparatuses such as additional spirals and a rotary-wheel
switch like the one Page used.47 I probed the circuit with an array of elec-
FIG. 14 Left: An overlay plot showing variation in voltage traces taken across
one spiral interval (with a resistor in parallel) when the circuit is mechanically
switched. Right: A constant frequency of 20kHz was applied to three intervals
of the spiral in succession (inner, middle, outer). The observed voltage is super-
imposed, showing an increase in peak voltage across the spiral. (Source:
author illustrations.)

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48. I used the HP33120A function/arbitrary wave generator for sine and square
waves up to 15MHz. For higher voltage square pulses (up to 150V at periods down to
0.01ms), I used a Grass S44 stimulator manufactured by Grass Medical Instruments,
Quincy, Massachusetts.
49. See Cavicchi, “Sparks, Shocks, and Voltage Traces,” and “Opening the Circuit to
the Body” (n. 28 above).
50. Jean Piaget, Possibility and Necessity, trans. Helga Feider (Minneapolis, 1987);
Eleanor Duckworth, “Inventing Density,” in “Tell Me More”: Listening to Learners Ex-
plain, ed. Eleanor Duckworth (New York, 2001); Elizabeth Cavicchi, “Opening Possi-
bilities in Experimental Science and Its History: Critical Explorations with Pendulums
and Singing Tubes,” Interchange 39, no. 4 (2008, in press).
trical test equipment.48 For data collection and analysis, I learned to use fea-
tures of the oscilloscope and software that were unfamiliar to me. These
techniques opened up multiple views on what was going on within my spi-
rals, just as, to him, Page’s intermediate taps opened up the spiral’s internal
electricity. In some of these experimental contexts, I observed voltages in-
crease in accord with what Page reported (fig. 14, right).49
Such confirmatory findings do not end my exploration. There are al-
ways more ways to probe the spiral and analyze its variable signals. The
observation that ambiguities remain, even under examination by diverse
techniques, indicates how ambiguities—including those from the human
body—are intrinsic to experimenting. Ambiguity drives our curiosity to
keep exploring, in some analogy to the electrical stimulus that rings across
spiraled conductors, from Page’s time to ours.
Conclusion
Encountering electrical behaviors that genuinely surprised him, Page
explored them without requiring or depending on explanations or other
guides. Starting with a circuit that was already used in the research of Fara-
day and Henry, Page took it further by opening it up and investigating its
internal and external paths. The knowledge that he generated kept his
experiment going; but rather than resulting in definitive outcomes, this
knowledge provided the means by which he tried new tests, invented appa-
ratuses, and compared observations. Although it might seem that our pres-
ent instrumentation and analyses would rule out ambiguities like those
Page experienced, my lab project demonstrates otherwise: ambiguities arise
even with modern equipment. The process of responding to ambiguities
without removing or resolving them brings to light questions and observa-
tions that were not apparent before. A key strategy in working productively
with ambiguity lies in opening up multiple possibilities, entry points, and
perspectives,50 as Page did by soldering intermediate taps into his spiral.
Physical and cultural boundaries tend to circumscribe and resist the
fluid kind of investigation in which Page engaged. His inclusion of his body
in the circuit illustrates how boundaries function to create ambiguities.

51. The body’s permeability to electricity is not essential for producing this phe-
nomenon, as demonstrated by the experiments of both Page and myself, where no body
was included; see Cavicchi, “Sparks, Shocks, and Voltage Traces,” and “Opening the Cir-
cuit to the Body.”
CAVICCHIK|KPage’s Spiral Conductor Experiment
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Page’s body not only sensed shock; it also affected the electrical signal giv-
ing rise to that shock. Permeability in the body’s physical boundary allowed
for knowledge about a new phenomenon.51 Our cultural boundaries re-
garding lab safety initially obscured from me the fact that Page’s body
played the double role of detecting and conducting electricity. Although
cultural boundaries shift over time, at any particular moment, the force of
their barriers may be immense. These cultural boundaries may be defined
with such impermeable specificity that there is no space available for work
that depends on tolerating ambiguity in order to proceed. Under these cir-
cumstances, it may then be untenable for a culture to appreciate the con-
tributions of someone like Page, who worked innovatively, without bound-
ing outcomes neatly from means, and without building understanding by
excising ambiguity.
Historical neglect of Charles Grafton Page is one product of the limit-
ing action of such cultural boundaries. But this neglect of Page is a symp-
tom of a much-larger and more-pervasive cultural pattern—one that con-
sists in boundaries that inhibit us from exploratory means of learning in
our everyday lives and communities. The story of the spiral experiment,
where opening up physical and cultural boundaries brought unexpected
effects and fascinating ambiguities into human experience, has the poten-
tial to help us ease the boundaries that restrain our curiosity at any time.