Aristide Bergès

Aristide Bergès

Laurent Arnaud Aristide Marcelin Bergès (born September 4, 1833 in Lorp , Ariège department , † February 28, 1904 in Lancey , Isère department ) was a French hydraulic engineer and paper manufacturer .

Bergès, who came from a family of paper manufacturers, went to the Saint-Joseph ecclesiastical school in Toulouse , where he graduated from high school in 1849 at the age of 16. He then attended the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris , supported by his father, and graduated in 1852 with a chemistry degree . Immediately afterwards, he joined the family business: his first task was to develop a machine that could produce paper from wood instead of from rags using a process developed by the Germans Voelter and Voith .

Because of the tense relationship with his father (Bergès spoke of his "unrestricted arbitrariness") Bergès worked in Paris, Toulouse and for the Spanish railway company. He applied for numerous patents, including one in 1864 that significantly improved the Voelter process. In the same year he founded his own paper mill in Mazères-sur-Salat ( Haute-Garonne ). A little later he decided to build a new paper mill in Lancey (near Villard-Bonnot in the Isère département in the French Alps), which would be state-of-the-art and, in particular, use electricity. He chose this location because of the impressive power of the mountain rivers and the abundant wood in the forests. To operate the factory, he built one of the world's first hydroelectric power stations in 1869 . It used a dam and pressure pipelines (only recently made possible by advances in metal production) an altitude difference of initially 200 meters, from 1881 of 500 meters. The power of the turbines driven by it rose from 500 to 1200 hp. This was the beginning of the worldwide industrial use of hydropower. However, only remnants of the facilities have survived.

In 1878 Aristide Bergès coined the expression "white coal" for hydropower, which became particularly popular since the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 , when it was mounted on a turbine he exhibited there.

Bergès never returned to his hometown. From 1878 to 1884 he was councilor in Grenoble , from 1896 to 1902 mayor of Villard-Bonnot . In the department of Isère, he founded several electricity companies, but had to fight lengthy processes for water usage rights. His grave is now in Toulouse.

Web links

• www.planete-tp.com: Aristide Bergès (1833-1904) (English)
• www.jacobins.mairie-toulouse.fr: Aristide Bergès (1833-1904) (French)