Manufacturer and inventor
In 1823 Farcot established a workshop on the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. In 1829 he received a bronze medal for two inventions, a variable-speed pump and a pump with two pistons in one body, giving a continuous jet. In 1834 he was awarded a silver medal for an olive oil press. In 1836 Marie-Joseph Farcot patented the first method of steam distribution that gave almost complete variability to the regulator. In 1839 he had transferred his workshop to the rue Moreau, and that year received another silver medal for an innovative steam engine with variable power.
In 1846 he transferred his metallurgical factory to Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis, where he purchased land covering 4 hectares (9.9 acres). The factory was accessible by railway branches from the north and the west. It mainly produced steam engines, but also made boilers, pumps and other products. The factory employed 145 workers in 1849, and 500 to 700 between 1872 and 1902. Marie-Joseph Farcot worked with his son, Jean Joseph Léon Farcot, who obtained many patents for mechanical engineering inventions, notably the servomechanism. Their company was called Farcot and Son.
In 1854 Marie-Joseph Farcot was awarded patents for two ways to modify Watt's governor so as to eliminate offset. In 1857 Marie-Joseph Farcot proposed a number of improvements to steam hammer design, including an arrangement so the steam acted from above, increasing the striking force, improved valve arrangements and the use of springs and material to absorb the shock and prevent breakage. He and his son Jean Joseph obtained another governor patent in 1862, and in 1864 a patent for a spring-loaded governor.
Thomas Savery was an English inventor and engineer. He invented the first commercially used steam-powered device, a steam pump which is often referred to as the "Savery engine". Savery's steam pump was a revolutionary method of pumping water, which improved mine drainage and made widespread public water supply practicable.
Denis Papin FRS was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker and of the steam engine.
The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is often referred to as the Newcomen fire engine or simply as a Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam drawn into the cylinder, thereby creating a partial vacuum which allowed the atmospheric pressure to push the piston into the cylinder. It was historically significant as the first practical device to harness steam to produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout Britain and Europe, principally to pump water out of mines. Hundreds were constructed throughout the 18th century.
Charles-Émile Reynaud was a French inventor, responsible for the praxinoscope and was responsible for the first projected animated films. His Pantomimes Lumineuses premiered on 28 October 1892 in Paris. His Théâtre Optique film system, patented in 1888, is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. The performances predated Auguste and Louis Lumière's first paid public screening of the cinematographe on 26 December 1895, often seen as the birth of cinema.
The Couperin family was a musical dynasty of professional composers and performers. They were the most prolific family in French musical history, active during the Baroque era. Louis Couperin and his nephew, François Couperin le grand, are the best known members of the family.
Steam power developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 17th century, to useful pumps for mining in 1700, and then to Watt's improved steam engine designs in the late 18th century. It is these later designs, introduced just when the need for practical power was growing due to the Industrial Revolution, that truly made steam power commonplace.
A hot air engine is any heat engine that uses the expansion and contraction of air under the influence of a temperature change to convert thermal energy into mechanical work. These engines may be based on a number of thermodynamic cycles encompassing both open cycle devices such as those of Sir George Cayley and John Ericsson and the closed cycle engine of Robert Stirling. Hot air engines are distinct from the better known internal combustion based engine and steam engine.
Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir, also known as Jean J. Lenoir, was a Belgian-French engineer who developed the internal combustion engine in 1858. Prior designs for such engines were patented as early as 1807, but none were commercially successful. Lenoir's engine was commercialized in sufficient quantities to be considered a success, a first for the internal combustion engine.
This timeline of heat engine technology describes how heat engines have been known since antiquity but have been made into increasingly useful devices since the 17th century as a better understanding of the processes involved was gained. A heat engine is any system that converts heat to mechanical energy, which can then be used to do mechanical work.They continue to be developed today.
Jean-Baptiste Glaire was a French Catholic priest, Hebraist, and Biblical scholar.
Internal combustion engines date back to between the 10th and 13th centuries, when the first rocket engines were invented in China. Following the first commercial steam engine in 1698, various efforts were made during the 18th century to develop equivalent internal combustion engines. In 1791, the English inventor John Barber patented a gas turbine. In 1794, Thomas Mead patented a gas engine. Also in 1794, Robert Street patented an internal-combustion engine, which was also the first to use liquid fuel (petroleum) and built an engine around that time. In 1798, John Stevens designed the first American internal combustion engine. In 1807, French engineers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce ran a prototype internal combustion engine, using controlled dust explosions, the Pyréolophore. This engine powered a boat on the river in France. The same year, the Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built and patented a hydrogen and oxygen-powered internal-combustion engine. Fitted to a crude four-wheeled wagon, François Isaac de Rivaz first drove it 100 meters in 1813, thus making history as the first car-like vehicle known to have been powered by an internal-combustion engine.
A steam hammer, also called a drop hammer, is an industrial power hammer driven by steam that is used for tasks such as shaping forgings and driving piles. Typically the hammer is attached to a piston that slides within a fixed cylinder, but in some designs the hammer is attached to a cylinder that slides along a fixed piston.
Baron Joseph Marie François Cachin was a French engineer, most notable for his work at Cherbourg Harbour. He was born in Castres on October 2, 1757 and died in Paris on February 23, 1825.
Jean Joseph Léon Farcot was a French engineer and industrialist whose factories employed up to 700 workers. He was also a prolific inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the servomechanism, where a feedback loop helps control a machine. The invention lets one helmsman control a ship's rudder weighing several tons.
Henri-Eugène-Adrien Farcot was a French clock-maker, industrialist, inventor, mechanical-engineer, aeronaut, occasional writer and one of the most celebrated conical pendulum clock makers.
Pierre-Joseph Ravel (1832–1908) was a Swiss civil engineer and inventor, father of the composer Maurice Ravel. He was a pioneer of the automobile industry. He invented and drove the steam-powered automobile in the late 1860s, developed an acetylene-powered two-stroke engine, built the racing car that could achieve speeds of up to 6 kilometres per hour (3.7 mph) and built a vehicle that could perform a somersault.
Louis-Martin Lebeuf was a French banker, faience manufacturer and right-leaning politician. He supported protectionist policies, and supported the coup d'etat that launched the Second French Empire under Napoleon III.
Joseph Périer was a French businessman involved in banking and mining. His brother, Casimir Pierre Périer, served as Prime Minister of France. Joseph Périer was extremely wealthy, perhaps the richest man in France, mainly from his coal mining interests. He served in the Chamber of Deputies for 16 years during the July Monarchy.
Jean Marie Noël Godefroy Calès was a French physician and politician. He was born on 21 March 1799 in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) and died on 25 July 1868 in Villefranche-de-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne).
Jacques-Constantin Périer was a self-taught French engineer and businessman who, with his brother, founded the Compagnie des eaux de Paris doing a period of great stock market speculation under Louis XVI. He is known for having introduced James Watt's steam engine to France in 1779 and for having built the first double-acting engine in 1789, only six years after Watt thanks to the intercession of Agustín de Betancourt during a visit to Watt's Albion Mills.
