Jacques de Romas

Jacques de Romas (born October 13, 1713 in Nérac ; † January 21, 1776 ibid) was a French physicist .

Life

He was a prosecutor and assessor of the Presidial of Nérac. In addition to his job, he dealt with an all-encompassing study of the natural sciences .

He became known for physical experiments during thunderstorms and in 1750 he recognized the connection between lightning and electricity , namely in connection with a lightning strike that struck Tampouy Castle. In the same year he invented a device which his companion François de Vivens (1697–1780) from Clairac called Brontomètre (Greek βρέμω : thunder). The brontometer should be able to measure atmospheric stresses. Also in 1750, his compatriot Denis Barbaret , like Romas a member of the Bordeaux Academy, published on these matters.

T1- d539 - Fig. 270. - Le cénacle scientifique du château de Clairac; Montesquieu et le Baron de Secondat, son fils, le chevalier de Vivens, Romas et les frères Dutilh

Later he led a similar experiment as that of Benjamin Franklin in the year 1750 in an exchange of correspondence with Peter Collinson had postulated: With a ascended to a wire-wound line kite in a thunderstorm Romas demonstrated the electrical nature of lightning; The experiment is said to have flown ten foot long sparks and explosions to have been observed. He reported that when the experiment was repeated in front of a large audience, he was given heavy electric shocks that were significantly more violent than any he had previously experienced in experiments with Leiden bottles . That is why he carried out later experiments only with separately grounded ladders and dragons guided on glass rods.

On July 12, 1752, he wrote to the Academy of Bordeaux with a first report on his experience with a grounded rod during thunderstorms. The first demonstration in Nérac is said to have taken place on May 14, 1753, but only to have been observed by residents. Other sources tell of his first public experiment on June 7, 1753 on a road near Nérac. However, there are different statements about when he carried out which experiment, the Chassang lexicon reports succinctly from "after 1757". It is also known that he later installed some lightning rods in the region in the 1750s.

Unlike many intellectuals of his time, the amateur physicist was not very keen on traveling and preferred to stay in his home region, Gascony, throughout his life . However, he stayed in Paris in 1764 , when he was accepted into the Académie des Sciences in recognition of his experiments with the “electrified dragon” . He had previously had to defend himself for having carried out only Franklin's idea; However, a specially appointed commission recognized after studying his notes that he had invented the kite experiment independently of Franklin.

In 1911 a 300 kg bronze statue was erected in his honor in Nérac, which President Armand Fallières inaugurated personally. It was melted down by the German occupiers in 1942 during the Vichy regime and only re-erected as a replica on February 13, 2010. A school in Nérac and several streets in the region also bear his name.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Luis Figuier: Les merveilles de la science ou Description populaire des inventions modern . Furne, Jouvet et C., 1867. Digitized
2. ↑ Biography Internationale des Pionniers du Cerf-Volant ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( Biographies of international pioneers of hang-gliding , French) 
3. ↑ Histoire de l'électricité. La découverte du paratonnerre. (French)
4. ↑ Marie-Nicolas Bouillet , Alexis Chassang (Ed.): Dictionnaire universel d'histoire et de geographie , Paris 1878.
5. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter R. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 22, 2020 (French). 
6. ↑ La Dépêche du Midi : Jacques de Romas retrouve son piédestal