Paul (Louis-Toussaint) Héroult (10 April 1863 – 9 May 1914) was a French scientist. He was one of the inventors of the Hall-Héroult process for smelting aluminium, and developed the first successful commercial electric arc furnace. He lived in Thury-Harcourt, Normandy.
Raoul Grimoin-Sanson (1860–1941) was an inventor in the field of early cinema. He was born in Elbeuf, as Raoul Grimoin; he added the surname Sanson later. He had an early interest in stage magic as well as photography.
In the 1890s, Grimoin-Sanson began experiments in moving pictures, and desired to project films, like those from Thomas Edison's kinetoscope, on screen. In 1896, he invented a crude camera/projector combination called the Phototachygraphe. In 1897, he patented the Cinéorama, a panoramic film projection system involving ten synchronized projectors. The Cinéorama was demonstrated at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, but problems with heat from the projectors caused it to be shut down. Despite the failure of his Cinéorama company and of later film work, in the 1920s Grimoin-Sanson would attempt to claim to be one of the major pioneers of film, alongside Marey and the Lumières.
Camille Alphonse Faure (21 May 1840, Vizille – 14 September 1898) was a French chemical engineer who in 1881 significantly improved the design of the lead-acid battery, which had been invented by Gaston Planté in 1859. Faure's improvements greatly increased the capacity of such batteries and led directly to their manufacture on an industrial scale. The patents were assigned to the Société La Force et la Lumière. The right to use these patents in the British Isles were sold to the Faure Electric Accumulator Company on 29 March 1881. Faure was a consultant engineer with William Edward Ayrton for this company.
René Prudent Patrice Dagron (17 March 1817 – 13 June 1900) was a French photographer and inventor. He was born in Aillières-Beauvoir, Sarthe, France.
On 21 June 1859, Dagron was granted the first microfilm patent in history. Dagron is also considered the inventor of the miniature photographic jewels (French: Bijoux photographiques microscopiques) known as Stanhopes because a modified Stanhope lens is used to view the microscopic picture attached to the lens. He is buried at Ivry Cemetery, Ivry-sur-Seine.
Adolphe Alexandre Chaillet (July 15, 1867, in Paris – after 1914) was a French inventor in the field of electrical engineering.
Chaillet created the Centennial Light, which has been illuminating a fire station in Livermore, California, for over a century. Chaillet was knowledgeable in chemistry and mineralogy.
Herminie Cadolle (1845–1926) was a French inventor of the modern bra and founder of the Cadolle Lingerie House. Cadolle was born, raised, and lived much of her early life in France. She was a close friend of the insurrectionist Louise Michel, who participated in the Paris Commune of 1871. Fearing state repression after the murderous defeat of the Commune uprising, Cadolle and her family fled for safety to Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1887, Cadolle opened a shop selling made-to-measure underwear. In 1889, Cadolle returned to Paris where she opened a similar lingerie workshop. There, she invented a two-piece undergarment. The lower part was a hybrid-corset for the waist and the upper supported the breasts by means of shoulder straps. A patent for the invention was filed in 1889. Cadolle exhibited her invention at the Great Exposition of 1900 and by 1905 the upper half was being sold separately as modern-day bras.Corsets had been briefly unpopular during the French Revolution of 1789, when they were associated with the aristocracy, but soon they returned to prominence as the political mood settled again. From the middle of the 19th century, gradually, the corset came under more and more criticism. Advocates for women’s rights, like Cadolle, and physicians highlighted its role in causing physical discomfort and health complications. Additionally, Cadolle continued to work into the 1920s. Her efforts were spurred by the First World War, which saw women enter the factories when male workers left for war. Comfort rather than beauty was crucial, so the corset was out and the bra was in. Cadolle’s innovation and different variations of it are still dominant in female undergarments, as is the desire for women’s rights and the rebellion against adherence to societal norms and the ideal image of a woman’s body.Cadolle became a fitter of bras to queens, princesses, dancers, and actresses. Mata Hari was among her customers. She was also the first to use cloth incorporating rubber (elastic) thread. Cadolle’s business is still running today.
Jules Allix (9 September 1818 in Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée – 1st September 1903 in Paris) was a feminist, socialist, political activist and eccentric inventor. A communard, he was mayor of the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
Jacques Rose Ferdinand Émile Sarrau (Perpignan 24 June 1837 – Saint-Yrieix 10 May 1904) was a French chemist. He worked most of his career at the laboratory in the Dépôt Central des Poudres et Salpêtres (Central Depot for Powder and Saltpetre). He did research on explosive shock waves, the effects of explosives and he developed new explosives. The Mach number was sometimes called in French the Nombre de Sarrau (Sarrau number).
Maurice Leblanc (1857 – 1923) was a French engineer and industrialist.
Born in Paris, Leblanc worked primarily in improving induction motors and alternators, where he invented the damper winding. He also invented an improved vacuum pump and worked in the area of refrigeration.
The December 1, 1880 French publication "La Lumière électrique", published an article by Leblanc entitled "Etude sur la transmission électrique des impressions lumineuses". In this article Leblanc outlined five functions required for a television system.
a transducer to convert light into electricity
a scanner to break up a picture into its constituent parts
a method of synchronising the receiver and the transmitter
a means of converting electrical signals back into light
a screen for viewing the imageLeblanc was awarded the Prix Poncelet for 1913 by the French Academy of Sciences.
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.