Louis Seguin (engineer)
Louis Seguin (* 1869 ; † 1918 ) was a French engineer and industrialist .
Life
family
His grandfather Marc Seguin was the first French designer of metal bridges during the Restoration period , the inventor of tubular boilers for locomotives and the promoter of the first French railway line Lyon - Saint-Étienne in 1831. His father, Augustin Seguin (1841–1904) , was the eldest son from Marc Seguin's second marriage. He had eleven children: Louis Seguin (1869–1918), engineer at the École Centrale , Laurent Seguin (1883–1944) and Augustin Seguin (1889–1965).
Working life
Louis Seguin graduated in 1891.
In 1895, at the age of 26, he opened his first factory in Gennevilliers , Hauts-de-Seine , northwest of Paris. He acquired the license for the oil engine (moteur à pétrole) Gnome from the German company Motorenfabrik Oberursel . He started with the automobile with small industrial engines with oil and gas drive for wheels (cycles) and for coupés. He relied on René Luquet from Saint-Germain, his financier, who was responsible for the commercial administration and also for the car dealers.
In 1903, when the Wright brothers began motorized flight, Louis Seguin and his brother Laurent knew how to diversify their production and design engines for various industrial applications.
Louis Seguin founded the Gnome engine company in Gennevilliers with his brothers Laurent and Augustin on June 6, 1905, with a starting capital of 500,000 francs. The company started out in the marine engine business, followed by car engines before turning to radial engines for aircraft. During this time, numerous other designers of internal combustion engines, such as Panhard & Levassor , Peugeot , Clément-Bayard , Ader , Aster , Darracq , Chenu , etc., also worked on adapting their machines for aviation. As early as 1906, the company had one hundred employees.
Before designing various types of engines, and after a commercial automobile crisis, the Seguin brothers launched a new project from 1907 onwards, an air-cooled radial engine with 7 cylinders with 50 hp: the Omega. The engine was presented at the first Paris Air Show in 1908 . It was only used by aviators from the summers of 1909 and 1910. More than 1,700 of these engines were built in France, and many more under license in Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, the United States and Russia.
On August 27, 1909, Henri Farman managed to beat the world record in distance and duration in a Gabriel Voisin aircraft with the new engine, the Gnome Omega (180 km in 3 hours and 15 minutes), and the engine reached it two more successes. On March 28, 1910, Henri Fabre brought the world's first seaplane to take off in the Étang de Berre . It was motorized with a Gnome Oméga engine. On July 10, 1910, Léon Morane in Reims was the first pilot to exceed 100 km / h on a Blériot monoplane equipped with the same engine. This engine made it possible to set more than 30 records.
Approximately 1500 engines were produced between 1910 and 1914. In 1915 the company Moteurs Gnome was merged with the company Le Rhône of Louis Verdet and became Gnôme et Rhône . In 1945 it was nationalized and renamed Snecma .
Sources and individual references
- ↑ Annie Fourcaut: La ville divisée: les segregation urbaines en question. Créaphis, Grâne 1996, ISBN 2-907-150669 , here p. 130.
- ↑ see the description of how the Gnome engine works in Gnôme et Rhône
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Seguin, Louis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French engineer and industrialist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1869 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1918 |