Théodore Turrettini

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Théodore Turrettini about 1895

Théodore Turrettini (born April 27, 1845 in Geneva , † October 6, 1916 in Geneva) was a Swiss engineer and politician .

biography

The Turrettini family immigrated to Geneva as Italian Protestants in the 16th century. Jean-Alphonse Turrettini is one of his ancestors . His father was the banker Alfons Theodor Albert Turrettini (1812-1891) and his mother Marie-Anne-Charlotte, b. Rigaud (1821-1876).

Théodore Turrettini attended the engineering school at the University of Lausanne , did an internship in a Frankfurt workshop and came to Siemens & Halske in Berlin , which he found to be “Prussian military”. After returning home, he spent a short time in Paris with Hippolyte Fontaine , who dealt with power transmission.

In 1870 he became head of the newly founded Société genevoise pour la construction d'instruments de physique (SIP), which manufactured drilling machines for the Gotthard tunnel , ice machines and precision machines. After a two-month stay with Edison in New York together with Dollfuss and René Thury , Turrettini began experimenting with electric lighting himself. He married Margarete Catherine Favre, the daughter of Alphonse Favre .

After Turrettini was elected to the city council in 1882, as head of the industrial department there managed the construction of the Usine de la Coulouvrenière on the Rhone , the city's first hydroelectric power station, which was supplemented with pumped storage in 1890 . From 1893 to 1896, Turettini dedicated himself to building the Usine de Chèvres , another run-of-river power plant on the Rhone, which was the largest run-of-river power plant in the world when it was commissioned.

When the United States planned the Niagara power plant , he was elected to the international Niagara commission alongside Lord Kelvin and Eleuthère Mascart . The companies Cuénod & Sautter and Faesch & Piccard were given orders to supply the turbines and their controllers. He turned down his appointment as chief engineer, but was entrusted with advisory functions until 1899.

He participated in the Swiss National Exhibition in Zurich in 1883 and in the electrical lighting of the Vienna Opera in 1884 and the Geneva Theater from March 1896. He then returned to SIP and retired around 1906 due to health problems.

In 1901 he was elected as a democrat in the cantonal parliament and in 1906 in the national council. He resigned from the Board of Directors in 1902 and from the City Council in 1910.

Turrettini is buried on the Cimetière des Rois .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Portrait of Theodore Turrettini (PDF; 29 kB) on the Electrosuisse website
  2. ^ Anne-Lise Head-König, Luigi Lorenzetti, Béatrice Veyrassat: Famille, parenté et réseaux en Occident: XVIIe-XXe siècles: mélanges offerts à Alfred Perrenoud . Librairie Droz, 2001, ISBN 978-2-88442-017-4 ( Google Books [accessed August 30, 2015]).
  3. ^ Author collective: Coulouvrenière . In: Geographical Lexicon of Switzerland . tape 1 . Attinger Brothers, Neuchâtel 1902, p. 551 .
  4. ↑ Bâtiment des Forces motrices . In: French Wikipedia .
  5. ↑ Et l'Usine devint Théâtre. In: Bâtiment des Forces Motrices. Retrieved August 30, 2015 .
  6. ^ Bénédict Frommel: Sécheron. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  7. ↑ Le Cimetière des Rois. Archived from the original on April 26, 2010 ; Retrieved August 30, 2015 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Turrettini, Théodore
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Engineer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1916
Place of death Geneva