Armand-Jean-François Seguin

Armand-Jean-François Seguin (born March 1767 in Paris , † January 24, 1835 in Paris ) was a French chemist, army supplier, economist and financier.

Life

Early enthusiasm for chemistry

Armand Seguin was the son of an administrator of the Duke of Orléans. He was affiliated with the Académie royale des sciences in the field of chemistry and in 1793 a member of the Commission Temporaire des Arts for the field of physics. But his interest was far greater. Joseph-Marie Quérard's Bibliographic Encyclopedia La France littéraire lists 72 of his brochures, mostly on financial topics. He published in the Annales de Chimie and the Journal de Physique . Seguin became part of the Lavoisier staff , with whom he worked on human and animal respiration. He earned his merit less by bringing in his own ideas than by publicly advocating concepts such as the caloric theory , which was popular between 1780 and 1820 and was only supplanted by the kinetic gas theory in the late 1850s .

Marie Lavoisier offered Seguin after the execution of her husband to help summarize Lavoisier's work, but the latter seemed to want to claim too much honor of discovery for himself, whereupon she ended the collaboration. Conversely, Seguin did not want to give himself up to a swipe at those Lavoisier colleagues who had not lifted a finger for him during the time of his distress.

Seguin also played a role in the discovery and isolation of morphine . He gave a lecture about this in 1804, which was published in 1814, and recognized the alkaline nature of some of the constituents of opium. His assistant at the time, Bernard Courtois , was also significantly involved in the work , as it turned out later (Seguin does not mention him in his publication). At about the same time, Charles Derosne (1803) studied the components of opium in Paris. To pursue the idea further, for example by examining the medical effectiveness of the isolated substances, Seguin no longer came back because of the indictment brought against him by Napoleon. The isolation of morphine and the knowledge of its alkaline nature (the fundamental step in the history of the discovery of the alkaloids , from which morphine was first isolated) is therefore attributed to Friedrich Sertürner , whose work became known in France in 1817 through Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and one Triggered abundance of activities in this field. As a result, a priority dispute arose over the discovery of morphine, triggered by Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin , who led Seguin's work.

Profitable renewal of leather production

Seguin was probably not so rich at the time of the French Revolution that he should have feared reprisals under the reign of terror , but he made remarkable fortunes shortly afterwards. The Welfare Committee commissioned on 31 October 1793 the chemist Berthollet , is an improvement of the current tanning process to worry about, and asked him the necessary funds available. He knew of Seguin's long-term attempts in this area and brought the results to the Welfare Committee with a proposal to support the research. After his invention was ready for presentation, Seguin was able to demonstrate the process on around a hundred animal skins in front of a commission: What had previously taken two years, now even thick leathers delivered in a few days.

At the same time, there was a political situation in which the public found itself in a feeling of national danger, which favored all inventions that seemed likely to increase the defense power. Even scientists who were otherwise considered to be calm and deliberate allowed themselves to be caught up in the general frenzy, including the famous Fourcroy , who on January 3, 1795 reported to the National Convention on the invention of Seguin, which was capable of being used by the armies in a much shorter time To help shoes:

"The old tanning took almost two years ... You buried the hides in a box of tanning agent for eighteen months or two years. Because of the discoveries made by Citizen Seguin, the new tanning process provides a hide suitable for the manufacture of soles in calf hides in 24 hours and in the much thicker buffalo hides in seven to eight days. The simplicity of the means is such that every citizen could make the necessary leathers for the manufacture of his soles for himself, for his consumption, even if he does not make the lye ... But one does not know that these are the simplest things that everyone thinks of last? "

Fourcroy warned that all citizens taken together would spend a billion on footwear with a consumption of two pairs of soles a year; the armies alone had come to 140 million. Seguin was given high credit for not having applied for a patent after more than 2000 attempts, but for having entrusted himself to the government. The National Convention, impressed by Fourcroy's eloquence, immediately issued an ordinance according to which Seguin should be provided with two national goods, one at Sèvres , the Brancas house and the island over which the bridge led at this municipality, and one near Nemours . There the hides from the slaughter of the army were to be delivered, which Seguin would process in the factories to be built, as supplier for the footwear of all armies of the republic - for nine years. Leather and boots really came from there, but the soles were spongy and slack. Seguin nevertheless made a fortune and became an outstanding example of the group of people who were already known as the “ nouveau riche ” at the end of the 18th century and in the early 19th century .

A man with quirks

His need to astonish the world drove Seguin to the strangest behaviors: At his very elegant receptions he did not shy away from showing himself in a jacket and slippers. Once he set off fireworks on his Château de Jouy estate , the sparks of which threatened to burn the faces of the audience. When they fled, they fell into hunting traps that he had covered with leaves. However, he only paid for all the effort involved when the bailiff called in. In his palace on Rue d'Anjou there was a famous gallery, music also had its place, only he took apart the old violins of the 17th and 18th centuries for research purposes. Giuseppe Cambini directed a chamber orchestra that worked for him. Seguin made headlines, also with his legal proceedings, which was precisely because he was indomitable toughness when someone owed him something.

The financier Seguin

Thanks to his great fortune, Seguin was able to do financial business alongside his original trade. In 1800 he worked as a public financier with the so-called Twenty United Merchants (Vingt Négociants réunis), in 1801 ten tried it without him, only to have to fall back on him. Finally, in 1804, the Consortium of the Society of United Merchants came about . But not only did the combined merchants not fill the French treasury - they emptied it - not only did Seguin not make a deal, but Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard offered him unusable bills of exchange from a Spanish consolidation fund for 7 million francs , and Napoleon made him partly liable for the damage suffered by merchants , as he explained in a letter to a minister:

“Seguin has been sentenced to one million eight hundred thousand francs. I will not agree on a compensation. I want the whole amount. "

The incarceration in Sainte-Pélagie prison may have increased the willingness to pay, but also the harshness with which Seguin now proceeded against his debtors in the matter - Ouvrard and Vanlerberghe . In the summer of 1807 Ouvrard lost a case against Seguin, which cost him 7 million francs. On February 27, 1823, a court ruled against Ouvrard and Vanlerberghe's heirs, according to which they owed Seguin 1.6 million francs, with interest almost doubled, from mutual business. Ouvrard's position was that he had already paid the amount, but he went to prison at the instigation of Seguin and remained there until 1829. The Royal Court of Justice in turn ruled in 1833 that the widow of Vanlerberghe had fraudulently and improperly attempted to transfer ownership to withdraw from obligations to Seguin. Grass was already growing over the island with the formerly smelly tanneries, nature recaptured the place and a picturesque idyll emerged by the end of the 19th century. In the 20th century, the car manufacturer Renault built a factory on the island, but the name has been retained over the centuries: Île Seguin .

credentials

• Joseph-Marie Quérard : La France littéraire, ou Dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens, et gens de lettres de la France, & c. , Volume IX, Éditeurs GP Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris 1964, pp. 23-27
• Stuart Pierson: Séguin, Armand , in Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Volume 12, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1981, pp. 286-287

Web links

• Rapport au Comité de Salut Public, sur les nouveaux Moyens de tanner les Cuirs, proposés par le cit. Armand Seguin , (Annales de Chimie, Volume 19, Paris 1797, pp. 15–77)
• Premier mémoir sur l'opium , (Annales de Chimie, Volume 91, Paris 1814, pp. 225–247)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The authors Partington (1765), Pierson (1767) and Payard (1768) provide different information on Seguin's year of birth
2. ^ Armand Seguin: Second mémoire sur le calorique , Annales de Chimie, Volume 5 (1790), pp. 231-257. Also Robert Fox: The Caloric Theory of Gases from Lavoisier to Regnault , Oxford University Press, Oxford 1971, p. 32 u. 38-39
3. ↑ Édouard Grimaux: Lavoisier. 1743 - 1794 , Félix Alcan, Éditeur, 2nd edition Paris 1896 (reprinted by Éditions Jacques Gabay, Sceaux 1992), p. 331 f.
4. ↑ Seguin Premier Mémoire sur l'Opium , Annales de Chimie, vol 92, 1814, 225 (dated 1804)
5. ↑ Maurice Payard: Le financier G.-J. Ouvrard. 1770-1846 , Académie nationale de Reims, Reims 1958, p. 90. The procedure introduced by Seguin was explained in a report by CH Lelièvre and Pelletier, which was published in 1797 in the Annales de Chimie, Volume 19, pp. 15-77 : Rapport au Comité de Salut Public, sur les nouveaux Moyens de tanner les Cuirs, proposés par le cit. Armand Seguin . The lengthy method described is apparently the so-called old pit tanning , in which, after tanning in broth, the hides are laid in pits in layers with intermediate layers of ground oak bark . The result is high quality, hard-wearing leather. What was new was tanning in pits or barrels by hanging in broths with tanning agents condensed from phenols and sulfuric acid with formaldehyde . This shortened the tanning time from about a year to 3 to 6 weeks. Today, solutions of chromium sulphates are used for the production of upper leather . Meyer's Lexicon of Technology and the Exact Natural Sciences , Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1970, p. 1617 f.
6. ↑ Arthur Lévy : Un grand profiteur de guerre sous la Révolution, l'Empire et la Restauration, G.-J. Ouvrard , Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1929, pp. 106-107
7. ↑ Maurice Payard: Le financier G.-J. Ouvrard. 1770 - 1846 , Académie nationale de Reims, Reims 1958, p. 90. The currency unit is unclear, possibly he meant francs .
8. ↑ ^{a b} Arthur Lévy: Un grand profiteur de guerre. Paris 1929, p. 107
9. ↑ Louis Bergeron: Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire , Mouton Éditeur, Paris et al. 1978, p. 155
10. ↑ ^{a b} Arthur Lévy: Un grand profiteur de guerre. Paris 1929, p. 108
11. ↑ Otto Wolff : The business of Mr. Ouvrard. From the life of a brilliant speculator , Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 242
12. ^ Entry on Cambini in the biography universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique by Fétis (French)
13. ^ Louis Bergeron: Banquiers, Negociants et Manufacturiers parisiens. Paris et al. 1978, p. 148
14. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770 - 1815. Merchant bankers and diplomats at work , Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1974, p. 306
15. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. The Hague 1974, p. 361
16. ↑ Otto Wolff: The business of Mr. Ouvrard. Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 292
17. ↑ Otto Wolff: The business of Mr. Ouvrard. Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 294
18. ↑ Otto Wolff: The business of Mr. Ouvrard. Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 296