Loude, Jean-François

Infoscience - École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

12 Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society   No. 104  (2010)Introduction In 2007, I was granted permission to search the cavernous attic of the 16th century building (Fig. 1) that was formerly the seat of the Academy of Lausanne (University since 1890), now used as a storeroom by the ‘Gymnase (i.e. High School) de la Cité’. Both the Academy and the Gymnase were located there until about 1890, when Uni-versity physics moved to a modern build-ing not far away. Old, obsolete equipment was probably not transferred to the new building.ElectroscopeAt the bottom of a large cardboard box filled with rather uninteresting 20th-cen-tury electrical instruments, I had the good luck to find a small object (Fig. 2) signed ‘Paul à Genève’ (Fig. 3), intact and in work-ing condition.A comparison with the electroscopes de-scribed by Archinard and Hackmann 1, 2, 3, 4 shows it to be a pith balls electroscope of the type made by Paul in 1785 for H.-B. de Saussure, who used it to study atmospheric electricity, notably when ascending Mont-Blanc in 1787. It has the characteristic four pairs of metallic earthing strips, internal and external, but, as seen in Fig. 4, no in-ternal scale to read the angle between the balls.The first regular experimental physics lec-tures at the Academy of Lausanne, with the required collection of physics instruments (‘Cabinet de physique’), began in 1776. Early inventories 5, dated 1822 and 1872, mention an ‘Electroscope de Saussure’ as being part of the collection of physics in-struments of the Academy, with a list of now lost accessories (metal hood, rod, etc.). It is more than tempting to assume that we found the original de Saussure electroscope listed there.This electroscope, one of the oldest objects in our collection of ancient physics instru-ments, is now prominently displayed in the Physics Museum at UNIL/EPFL, inaugurated in January 2009 (Web site: http://musee-physique.epfl.ch). About the MakerThe known facts about the life and family of Jaques Paul (1733-1796) are summarised below, such as given by Senebier 6, Heyer 7 and Schulé 8.Jaques (or Jacques) Paul was born in Ge-neva in 1733. At the end of the 17th cen-tury, his grandfather had left south-eastern France, fleeing from the religious perse-cutions, and had taken refuge in Calvinist Geneva. Both his grandfather and his father were pewterers, established in Geneva but not citizens.Jaques was a precocious child, becoming Master pewterer at the early age of 14. A few years later, not yet 20, he devised and built a machine needed to lift and position precisely the enormous blocks of stone used in the construction of the new west-ern portico of the Saint-Pierre cathedral. He had soon other opportunities to show his inventiveness, building a sewer for a promi-nent citizen of Geneva. At the age of 22, he left for Paris, where he had soon to aban-don the intended apprenticeship as a can-non-, bell- and statue-founder, too expensive for his limited means. He then worked for the renowned scientific instrument maker Jacques Canivet. He also found time to at-tend the lectures by Abbé Nollet.In 1757, called back to Geneva by his sick father, he worked for clockmakers, perfect-ing pieces of apparatus needed by them, and also for scientists such as Horace-Béné-dict de Saussure and Jean-André de Luc: for him, he built in 1763 a portable mercury barometer 1, 2, of the type later used by de Saussure when ascending Mont-Blanc.From his marriage in 1759, he got two sons and a daughter.After a long period of peace and prosper-ity, Geneva once more experienced, from about 1762 on, a lengthy period of civil and political unrest. Many Geneva inhabit-ants, even if born there, were discriminat-ed against for not being citizens: they had somewhat limited civil rights and no politi-cal rights at all. Jaques and his family left in 1763 for Montbéliard (now in France, near Basel, but then a Lutheran town, dependent upon the duchy of Württemberg). In the mechanical workshop he opened there, he produced specialised parts for repeating watches (‘cadratures’).Back to Geneva in 1776, he was admitted to citizenship (‘Bourgeoisie’), free of charge, without having to pay the sometimes very high admission fees, in recognition of his exceptional talent, and its usefulness for the prosperity of the city. For the Govern-A Paul – de Saussure Electroscope at Lausanne UniversityJean-François LoudeFig. 1 ‘Château et Cathédrale’ at the beginning of the 20th century. The Academy building is the long-roofed one, in front of the bell-tower of the cathedral.Figs. 2  Paul – de Saussure electroscope. Base diam. 70 mm; height 70 mm.13Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society   No. 104  (2010)ment of the Republic, he produced weight standards and precision scales. For and in collaboration with scientists such as Marc-Auguste Pictet and H.-B. de Saussure, he ex-ecuted the instruments they had imagined. One of the best known is the hair hygrom-eter 9, devised by de Saussure, of which Paul made and sold at least 150, all over Eu-rope. For him, he also made electroscopes, magnetometers, anemometers, etc. 1, 2. Also interested in public affairs, he became in 1787 the first editor of a weekly newspa-per, the Journal de Genève, the last number of which was printed in 1794. In 1788, he was appointed Manager of the Waterworks, supervising the hydraulic machine supply-ing Geneva with water pumped from the Rhone river, and living in a house next to it. The same year, his second son, Nicolas, aged 25, became a partner in the direction of the mechanical workshop. Jaques Paul was consulted as an expert on all kinds of technical matters. For instance, he acted as an adviser when, in 1791, a new model of ladder for the fire brigade was chosen. He even built a prosthetic arm.In not too good health since 1788, he died in December 1796, aged 63.The first of his sons, Théodore-Marc (1760-1832), is specially known for having been the first ‘Sautier’ of Geneva to record, in 1818, the date of appearance of the first leaf on a given horse-chestnut tree near the Town Hall (‘Hôtel de Ville’, seat of the Government), of which he was the Warden and where he lived. This series of uninter-rupted annual records gives an indirect in-formation about temperatures and climate. Besides, he is reputed to have built a maxi-mum/minimum hair hygrometer, now lost, and of which no description is left.Nothing is known about the studies of the second son, Nicolas (1763-1806), except the fact that he travelled for several years, staying in Paris and in England. Back in Ge-neva, he worked in close collaboration with his father from 1788. The instruments made in the workshop are signed “Paul”, without first-name initial. He was also busy perfect-ing balances, controlling the weights and measures in use in the Republic and try-ing to keep in working condition the age-ing hydraulic machine supplying Geneva with water, officially succeeding his father as supervisor of the waterworks in 1796. In 1790, Nicolas Paul and his father Jaques, the pharmacist Henri-Albert Gosse and Jean-Jacob Schweppe formed a partnership to produce and sell artificially carbonated wa-ter 10. Nicolas, married in 1792, got a techni-cally gifted son, Jean-Théodore.Jean-Théodore (1798-1836) became an ap-prentice in England. After the early death of his father, he returned to Geneva to take over for a few years the management of the family workshop, before turning his atten-tion to civic and other technical matters and finishing his short life in France.AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Dr. F. d’Ambrogio, who, before retiring, invited me to explore the collections of physics instruments at the Gymnase de la Cité and allowed me to sal-vage many old interesting pieces. I am also indebted to my colleague at EPFL Prof. D. Schwarzenbach for proofreading the manu-script.Notes and References:1. M. Archinard, Collection de Saussure (Genève: Musée d’art et d’histoire, 1979).2. M. Archinard, ‘Les instruments scienti-fiques d’Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’, Le Monde alpin et rhodanien, 1er-2e trimes-tres 1988, pp. 151-163.3. W. D. Hackmann, ‘Eighteenth Century Electrostatic Measuring Devices’, Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scien-za di Firenze, 3-2 (1978), pp. 3-58.4. W. D. Hackmann, ‘Electroscope’, in R. Budd and D. J. Warner eds., Instruments of Science (London: The Science Museum, 1998).5. Archives Cantonales Vaudoises, Lausan-ne, ACV Bdd 157/01 (1825, p. 47) and Bdd 157/4 (1872, p. 26).6. J. Senebier, ‘Notice historique sur Jaques Paul, citoyen de Genève’, Journal littéraire de Lausanne, No. 6 (June 1797), pp. 413-424.7. Th. Heyer, ‘Notice sur Jacques et Nicolas Paul, mécaniciens’, Bulletin de la Classe d’Industrie et de Commerce de la Société des Arts de Genève, No. 85, env. 1860, pp. 1-19.8. P. Schulé, ‘Une dynastie de “mécaniciens” et d’inventeurs, «les Paul»’, Genava, N.S., 29 (1981) pp. 139-149. Download: http://doc.rero.ch/record/13248.9. M. Archinard, L’apport genevois à l’hygro-métrie (Geneva: Musée d’histoire des scien-ces, 1980). Also Gesnerus, 34, 1977, pp. 362-382.10. Schweppe (1740-1821), born in Ger-many but living in Geneva, had invented in 1783 a process to produce carbon diox-ide and dissolve it into water. In the part-nership, Nicolas Paul was the technician building the machinery. The brand name ‘Schweppes’ is still known throughout the world.Author’s address:EPFL-BSPSB-IPEP-LPHE                        CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerlande-mail: jean-francois.loude@epfl.chFig. 4  Close-up of the pith balls suspended by thin metal wires.Fig. 3  Maker’s signature on the bottom.

A Paul – de Saussure Electroscope at Lausanne University

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A Paul – de Saussure Electroscope at Lausanne University

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