Charles Bourseul

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Photo taken in 1912

Charles Bourseul (born April 28, 1829 in Brussels , † November 23, 1912 in Saint-Céré , France) was a French telegraph technician and inventor.

Life

Bourseul came to France when his father, a soldier, was transferred to France. After completing his apprenticeship, he got a job as a telegraph mechanic in the Paris telegraph office. There he was able to work on the improvement of the telegraphs of Samuel FB Morse and Louis Clément François Breguet .

From 1848 Bourseul served in the French army in Algiers and attracted attention by successfully teaching maths to the children of other soldiers . When his military service ended in 1849, he moved to Paris and worked again as a telegraph clerk. He was unable to start a previously planned course at the École polytechnique for health reasons.

Bourseul worked in Paris on the electrical transmission of the human voice and in 1854 published the article "Téléphonie électrique" in the magazine L'Illustration de Paris , in which he was the first to describe the idea of ​​the telephone . According to him, a moving plate should alternately open and close a circuit. However, Bourseul was neither taken seriously nor received any support. So Bourseul abandoned his plans to implement the idea, and his proposal was long forgotten.

He made a career in postal administration and was “Directeur des Postes et Télégraphes” when he retired. In 1882, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison called him a "source of inspiration". In 1907, Bourseul applied for an increase in his pension, referring to his preparatory work on the development of the telephone, whereupon the then French Postmaster General Mougeot had investigations carried out. When Bourseul's statements were confirmed, there was a substantial increase in his pension.

literature

  • (fr) C. Bourseul, "Transmission électrique de la parole", Paris, L'Illustration , 26. VIII. 1854.
  • (fr) G. Babin, “Le téléphone, invention française”, Paris, L'Illustration , 21.XI 1908.
  • Wolfgang Klein: Telephony pioneers. In: 100 years of telephones in Germany. Reprint of the 1/1977 issue of the “Archive for German Postal History”, ISSN  0003-8989 , pp. 4–5.
  • Weinrich, Gerhard: To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Charles Bourseul - a pioneer of telephony, in: "Das Archiv" - magazine for communication history, issue 3/2012, p. 50

See also

Invention of the telephone

personal data
SURNAME Bourseul, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French inventor, developed the first proposal for electrical voice transmission
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Brussels
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1912
Place of death Saint-Céré , France