Ami Argand

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François-Pierre-Amédée Argand
Drawing of an Argand study lamp

Ami Argand , origin. François-Pierre-Amédée Argand (born July 5, 1750 in Geneva ; † October 14, 1803 there ), was a Geneva physicist , chemist , inventor and entrepreneur .

Live and act

He was the ninth of ten children of watchmaker Jean-Louis (1705–1780) and Madeleine, b. Gaudy. The Argand family originally came from the village of Bonne at the foot of the Voirons mountain range, and moved to Geneva at the end of the 16th century.

He studied in Geneva and was a student of the naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure , a co-founder of meteorology . While in Paris in the 1770s , he published several scientific articles on meteorology, specifically on the phenomenon of hail and its causes. In 1775 he studied physics and chemistry in Paris with Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier and Antoine François de Fourcroy .

He took up an apprenticeship in chemistry and came up with some ideas to improve the distillation of wine into brandy . Together with his brother, he founded a large distillery near Montpellier in 1780 , which worked according to a method he had developed.

In 1783 he met Étienne Montgolfier and took part in the experiments with the hot air balloon in Lyon .

From 1780 he began to improve the oil lamp . He had a plumber in Montpellier build a lamp according to his specifications. He developed the Argand lamp named after him with a round wick, which reached a higher burning temperature due to a higher oxygen supply and thus enabled the fuel to burn more cleanly . A glass cylinder placed over the flame calmed the burning process and thus the emission of light. A rotating mechanism made it possible to set the wick higher or lower and thus increase or decrease the light output.

For a calm flame, he first improved the air flow by installing a sheet metal chimney on top, which he replaced in 1784 with lamp glass. In the same year he received the patent for this oil lamp. He set up a factory in London. His lamp was imitated by the Parisian pharmacist Antoine-Arnoult Quinquet (1745–1803) and his partner Ambroise Bonaventure Lange. (Quinquet may have used a glass cylinder as early as 1756.) In 1787, together with his pupil and nephew Isaac-Ami Bordier-Marcet (1768–1835), he founded a new factory in Versoix near Geneva, which, however, after the revocation of the patents following the revolution of Got into trouble in 1789. From 1800 the Argand lamps were also used on lighthouses .

First, rapeseed oil was used , which was obtained from rapeseed and was therefore easy to produce over a large area. After the discovery of oil fields in Pennsylvania was petroleum preferred as a cheaper and cleaner fuel the organic oil. Many petroleum lamps , which were now widely used, also burned according to the Argand principle.

In 1789 he married Isaline Marcet, the daughter of the agronomist Isaac. His only son died in an accident at the factory.

In 1792 he and Joseph Montgolfier invented the hydraulic ram and improved machines for spinning and carding cotton.

literature

  • B. Frommel: Ami Argand à Versoix, histoire et archeologie d'un site industriel. Département de l'aménagement, de l'équipement et du logement, Geneva 1999
  • John J. Wolfe: Brandy, Balloons & Lamps: Ami Argand, 1750-1803. 1999, ISBN 0-8093-2278-1

Web links

Commons : Aimé Argand  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ René Sigrist: Argand, Ami. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ^ Société Genevoise de Généalogie: Jean-Louis ARGAND . Retrieved October 14, 2019 .
  3. ↑ archive.org: Quarterly publication of the Natural Research Society in Zurich. 29th year, Zurich 1884, p. 403ff.
  4. ↑ Fifty years in the lamp industry. Anniversary publication of the company Wild & Wessel, Berlin 1894 (PDF 270kB)
  5. ↑ Michaud: Biography universelle ancienne et modern ou histoire par ordre alphabétique, de la vie privée et publique de tous les hommes qui se sont distingués par leurs écrits, leurs actions, leurs talents. Chez Michaud frères, (1834) p. 41
  6. ^ Library for economic and social history Cologne: Ludwig Darmstaedter: Handbook for the history of natural sciences and technology. In chronological representation. 2. reworked. u. Probably edition, with the assistance of R. du Bois-Reymond, Singer, Berlin 1908, p. 200 (PDF 2.2MB)
  7. ↑ Jean de Senarclens: Bordier, Isaac-Ami. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
personal data
SURNAME Argand, Ami
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Argand, François Pierre Amédée
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss inventor, physicist, chemist and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1750
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 1803
Place of death London