Gustave-Adolphe Hirn (21 August 1815 – 14 January 1890) was a French physicist, astronomer, mathematician, and engineer who made important measurements of the mechanical equivalent of heat and contributions to the early development of thermodynamics. He further applied his science in the practical development of steam engines.
Charles-Joseph Pigeon (29 March 1838 – 18 March 1915) was born in Le Mesnil-Lieubray in Normandy in France.
He started as a salesman in Le Bon Marché in Paris, where he became a close friend of Ernest Cognacq, subsequently the founder of the Samaritaine department store.
Pigeon became a dealer in cycle lamps and other lamps. His invention and manufacture of the Pigeon lamp, a non-exploding gasoline lamp, in 1884 (exhibited at the Exposition universelle de 1900), made him famous and wealthy.
After his death he remains noted for his family grave in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, which he commissioned in 1905 to hold up to 18 family members. The main feature is a life-sized bronze sculpture of Pigeon (notebook and pencil in hand) and his wife lying on a bed, overlooked by an angel, which had been illuminated by a lamp for many years by his custodians.
Joseph-Louis Lambot (born 22 May 1814 in Montfort sur Argens; died 2 August 1887 in Brignoles), is the inventor of ferro-cement, which led to the development of what is now known as reinforced concrete. He studied in Paris, where his uncle Baron Lambot was aide-de-camp to the Duke of Bourbon.
In 1841 he moved to his family's estate of Chateau Miraval in the Department of the Var (Southern France), where he applied himself to agriculture. It is around that time that he started constructing water tanks and troughs using cement mortar (masonry) and iron reinforcement most likely in the form of iron rods, chicken wire (which was invented in Britain in 1844 and used for shipping crates) and possibly barrel bands that were easily available with the arrival of the machine age. In 1848 he constructed his first boat using the same system, which he tested on ponds on the estate. This boat was patented on 30 January 1855 and presented at the 1855 World's Fair in Paris (Exposition Universelle - 1855). Unfortunately, his patents went no further and were superseded by patents of Joseph Monier. The original prototype is preserved at the Museum of Brignoles. Robert Courland describes in his book Concrete Planet that Lambot's boat sank and was preserved in anaerobic mud at the bottom of the lake. The boat was recovered more than a hundred years later.
His birthplace in Montfort-sur-Argens is now "Maison Lambot" BnB.
Jules Carpentier (30 August 1851 – 30 June 1921) was a French engineer and inventor.
Jules Carpentier was a student at the French École polytechnique.
He bought the Ruhmkorff workshops in Paris when Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff died and made it a successful business for building electrical and magnetical devices. From 1890, he started to build photographic and cinematographic cameras. He is the designer of the submarine periscope, and worked at the adjustment of trichromic process of colour photography.
He patented the "Cinématographe", which serves as a film projector and developer in the late 1890s, and built devices from the Lumière Brothers.
Another of his patents, filed in England, was a primary reference of Theodor Scheimpflug, who disclaimed inventing the falsely eponymous Scheimpflug principle.He died in 1921 in a car accident in Joigny, France.
Henri-Émile Bazin (10 January 1829 – 7 February 1917), also known as Henry Bazin, was a French engineer specializing in hydraulic engineering, and whose main contributions relate to the systematic study of free surface flows and the measurement of flows (gauging).
Charles Tellier (29 June 1828 – 19 October 1913) was a French engineer, born in Amiens. He early made a study of motors and compressed air. In 1868, he began experiments in refrigeration, which resulted ultimately in the refrigerating plant, as used on ocean vessels, to preserve meats and other perishable food. In 1911, Tellier was awarded the Joest prize by the French Institute and, in 1912, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He wrote Histoire d'une invention moderne, le frigorifique (1910).
Tellier died impoverished in Paris. Dimethyl ether was the first refrigerant, in 1876, Charles Tellier bought the ex-Elder-Dempster a 690 tons cargo ship Eboe and fitted a Methyl-ether refrigerating plant of his design. The ship was renamed Le Frigorifique and successfully imported a cargo of refrigerated meat from Argentina. However the machinery could be improved and in 1877 another refrigerated ship called Paraguay with a refrigerating plant improved by Ferdinand Carré was put into service on the South American run.
Alphonse Pénaud (31 May 1850 – 22 October 1880), was a 19th-century French pioneer of aviation design and engineering. He was the originator of the use of twisted rubber to power model aircraft, and his 1871 model airplane, which he called the Planophore, was the first aerodynamically stable flying model. He went on to design a full-sized aircraft with many advanced features, but was unable to get any support for the project, and eventually committed suicide in 1880, aged 30.
Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ʃaʁl adɔlf alfɑ̃]; 26 October 1817 – 6 December 1891) was a French engineer of the Corps of Bridges and Roads. As a close associate of Baron Haussmann and later as Director of Public Works at Paris City Hall from 1871, he was instrumental in the large-scale renovation of Paris in the second half of the 19th century. In 1889, Alphand was elevated to the rank of Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. In 1891, shortly before his death, he succeeded Haussmann as a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
Louis Mékarski (in Polish Ludwik Mękarski) (1843, Clermont-Ferrand, France – 1923) was a French engineer and inventor of Polish origin. In the 1870s he invented the so-called Mekarski system of compressed-air powered trams which was used in several cities of France and USA as alternative to horse-powered and steam-powered trams.
Louis-Marie Hilaire Bernigaud de Grange, Count (Comte) de Chardonnet (1 May 1839 – 11 March 1924) was a French engineer and industrialist from Besançon, and inventor of artificial silk.
In the late 1870s, Chardonnet was working with Louis Pasteur on a remedy to the epidemic that was destroying French silkworms. Failure to clean up a spill in the darkroom resulted in Chardonnet's discovery of nitrocellulose as a potential replacement for real silk. Realizing the value of such a discovery, Chardonnet began to develop his new product.He called his new invention "Chardonnet silk" (soie de Chardonnet) and displayed it in the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Unfortunately, Chardonnet's material was extremely flammable, and was subsequently replaced with other, more stable materials.
He was the first to patent artificial silk, although Georges Audemars had invented a variety called rayon in 1855.