Jean Marie Le Bris (25 March 1817, Concarneau – 17 February 1872, Douarnenez) was a French aviator, born in Concarneau, Brittany who built two glider aircraft and performed at least one flight on board of his first machine in late 1856. His name (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ maʁi lə bʁis]) is sometimes spelled Jean-Marie Le Bris, and he is also known as Yann Vari Ar Briz (Breton pronunciation: [jɑ̃n vari ar briz\s]) in Breton language.
André-Eugène Blondel (28 August 1863 – 15 November 1938) was a French engineer and physicist. He is the inventor of the electromechanical oscillograph and a system of photometric units of measurement.
Léon Ernest Gaumont (French: [ɡomɔ̃]; 10 May 1864 – 10 August 1946) was a French inventor, engineer, and industrialist who was a pioneer of the motion picture industry. He founded the world's oldest operating film studio, Gaumont Film Company, and worked in partnership with Solax Studios.
Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) was a French engineer, industrialist, biologist, and illusionist. In 1894 and 1895, he and his brother Louis invented an animated photographic camera and projection device, the cinematograph, which met with worldwide success.
Lumière was born in Besançon. He attended the Martinière Technical School and worked as a manager at the photographic company of his father, Claude-Antoine Lumière. He was invited to attend a demonstration of the Kinetoscope invented by Thomas Edison, which inspired his and his brother's work on the cinematograph. The brothers screened their first film using this device in December 1895, and following the success of this initial venture opened a number of cinemas worldwide. However, Auguste was skeptical of the potential of the device, remarking "My invention can be exploited... as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that it has no commercial value whatsoever".After his work on the cinematograph Lumière began focusing on the biomedical field, becoming a pioneer in the use of X-rays to examine fractures. He also contributed to innovations in military aircraft, producing a catalytic heater to allow cold-weather engine starts. He died in Lyon, aged 91.
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.