François Borel (engineer)

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François Borel (born May 17, 1842 in Couvet , † January 17, 1924 in Cortaillod ) was a Swiss engineer .

Life

The son of a toolmaker for watchmakers attended high school in Neuchâtel and studied civil engineering at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich. After obtaining his diploma in 1863, he worked for a year in Schaffhausen on Moserdamm and then became a teacher at the Ecole industrial in La Chaux-de-Fonds .

He also served his home canton as an expert in hydraulic engineering. As a result of his part-time hydraulic engineering work on the Areuse , a manufacturer from Saint-Aubin-Sauges , who made asphalt paper pipes for drinking water pipes , recruited him . Borel recognized the electrically insulating effect of the asphalt and manufactured cables with a copper core encased in asphalt paper tape and asphalt cord. However, as these became leaky, they failed after a while.

In 1876, back in school, he tested a cable made from a cast lead pipe with three lead conductors embedded in resin. In 1879 a Geneva company built him a lead press based on his designs. But even the attempts to isolate rosin were unsuccessful.

The solution was found by wrapping the copper core with bituminous textile fibers or paper, drying and impregnating and, as an essential innovation, pressing the lead sheath around the cable. He also tested other mineral insulation materials.

In 1878 he entered into a partnership with the industrialist Edouard Berthoux, who had a factory in Cortaillod . In the same year they patented a telegraph cable. He built cables for low voltage, for telegraphy and telephony, for the first time in Cologne in 1890 also for high voltage. For the Paris Electricity Exhibition of 1881 , the first 3-kilovolt cables for Jablotschkov candles were laid on the Paris Champs-Elysées .

In 1882 he began producing capacitors for simultaneous telegraphy and telephony.

When an alternating current energy supply was set up in the Vevey - Montreux conglomerate in 1887 , the creators asked him for an alternating current meter. In 1888 he was able to deliver a counter based on the rotating field principle and in the same year the electric tram Transports publics Vevey-Montreux-Chillon-Villeneuve went into operation. However, he had to give up the meter business after a few years.

In 1897 he founded the branches Société Française des Câbles Electriques, systèmes Berthoud, Borel et Compagnie in Lyon and Süddeutsche Kabelwerke in Mannheim , which were managed by two nephews. At the end of the century he bought a Delahaye . Around 1900 he got health problems. He resigned from management four years later.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ François Borel (PDF; 29 kB) on the Electrosuisse website .
  2. ^ Robert Monro Black: The history of electric wires and cables. Peter Peregrinus / Science Museum, London 1983, ISBN 0-86341-001-4 , p. 158 ( online )
  3. ↑ Eric-André Klauser: Câbles Cortaillod. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Borel, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss engineer
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH Couvet
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 1924
Place of death Cortaillod