Philippe Henri de Girard
Philippe Henri de Girard (born February 1, 1775 in Lourmarin , Département Vaucluse , † August 26, 1845 in Paris ) was a French technician .
He comes from a wealthy aristocratic family and got a good education. During the French Revolution, however, the family was forced to leave France. In order to earn money, Girard tried a wide variety of professions. He was a painter on the island of Mahon, a soap manufacturer in Livorno, a manufacturer of chemical products in Marseille and a teacher of history and science in Nice and Montpellier. He then returned to Paris under Napoleon Bonaparte .
When, on May 7, 1810, the emperor offered a price of one million francs (which was never paid) for the invention of a flax spinning machine to bind a product that competed with English cotton. Because the continental barrier had drastic consequences for the production of fabrics on the European continent. Girard also endeavored to design such a machine and became the founder of the mechanical flax spinning mill with his machine, which was patented and constantly improved in France on July 8, 1810 , since the later inventions are only advances on the path he initiated and practically pursued. The end of Napoleonic rule in 1814 meant not only that the prize was not paid, but that Girard was left with a lot of debt. In 1815 he therefore took advantage of the offer of the Austrian government to build a factory near Hirtenberg . In 1819 there were 20 machines working there, but the matter was not a financial success, because the English also continuously improved their weaving and spinning machines. In 1837, Johann Faltis, who introduced improved machines in Bohemia, had more success. By the way, with an invention to regulate the river, he ensured that the town of Hirtenberg received an automatic sluice and was thus protected from flooding.
In 1817 he tried again to get the money for his flax machine in France, but to no avail. He turned to England, but as a Frenchman he had no real chance. A patent for such a machine was also given to a Horace Hall in 1814 . According to Grothe, the invention is based on copies of devices that two Girards factory managers had secretly sold to England in 1814. Instead Girard tried his hand at working as a textile manufacturer in Lille, but went bankrupt in the economic crisis after 1815.
Despite the financial failure in Austria, he was a brilliant engineer and so the Russian government brought him to Warsaw in 1825. He worked in the Polish mining industry, in hydraulic engineering and promoted sugar production and flax spinning. Initially with the money of Count Heinrich Lubomirski, he built a factory. Since the factory produced little income, the count sold it until it finally ended up at the Bank of Poland. The factory was sold in 1857 to the Bohemian company Hille und Dietrich from Schönlind . They modernized the plant and turned it into a company in which 3000 people were already working by 1872. But Girard was not forgotten, in honor of him, the small town of Ruda Guzowska where Lubomirski built the factory was renamed Żyrardów (Girardowe) - the Polish version of the French name Girard - as early as 1827 . Girard himself had meanwhile become chief of the Polish mining industry.
In 1842 his rights were recognized by the Societe d'Encouragement pour l'industrie nationale. It sympathized with the revolutionaries in Poland. He was charged with supplying weapons and only his services to the Polish mining industry prevented him from being exiled to Siberia. Therefore, he returned to France again in 1844. Where Comtesse de Vernede de Corneillan, a granddaughter of the late brother, took him in. He tried again in vain to receive his prize money and died in Paris on August 26, 1845. It was not until 1853 that the National Assembly recognized his claim, and his two surviving heirs each received a pension of 6,000 francs.
He also invented an achromatic telescope in which the glass was replaced by a liquid. As early as 1806 he showed a rotating steam engine at the Paris exhibition and in 1813 a steam cannon . Formerly than Jacob Perkins who demonstrated it in 1824. He also invented the tubular boiler for steam engines.
During his stay in Austria he constructed a musical instrument called a tremolophon . In Warsaw he built a chronothermometer that was attached to the facade of the bank. Furthermore, a hydraulic wheel as well as an apparatus for the extraction and evaporation of the beetroot juice, another to set spherical bodies in rotation with great accuracy, another for heating the air in blast furnaces and much more.
literature
- JC Poggendorff's biographical-literary concise dictionary for mathematics, astronomy, physics with geophysics, chemistry, crystallography and related areas of knowledge, Volume A – L, 1863, p.904
- Allgemeine Deutsche Polytechnische Zeitung, Volume 1, 1873, pp.181f
- Hermann Grothe : Philippe de Girard: Inventor of the mechanical flax spinning mill, Springer, 1863, digitized
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ernestine von L., King Jérôme and his family in exile , p.321 (partial view)
- ^ Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de Cambrai. (Avec planches.), Volume 22; Volume 25, page 14
- ↑ East and West, Leaves for Art, Literature and Social Life, 1845, p.612
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Girard, Philippe Henri de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Girard, Philippe de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French technician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 1, 1775 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lourmarin |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 26, 1845 |
| Place of death | Paris |