Gautier, Paul Ferdinand
Contenu
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Nom
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Gautier, Paul Ferdinand
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Date de naissance
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10 December 1842
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Date de mort
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7 July 1909
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Lieu de naissance
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Paris
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Lieu de mort
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Paris
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Couverture temporelle
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1876-1909
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Couverture spatiale
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Paris
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Biographie
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An optician specialised in the making of large observatory and geodetic instruments, Gautier was apprenticed at the age of 13, and formed himself by following a course of geometry at the Ecole spéciale de dessin in the rue de l'Ecole de la Médecine. In 1860 he became a workman in the Secretan business where he remained until 1866 when he moved to Eichens. He established his own business in 1876, absorbing that of Eichens (qv), in which he had been a partner since 1881, in 1884 and was elected a member of the Société Internationale des Electriciens 2 February 1887. In c. 1885 he made for the Henry Brothers a machine for measuring positions on photographic plates. By 1900 he had made seventeen ordinary equatorial instruments, thirteen photographic equatorials, six Coudé equatorials, and three large Foucault telescopes as well as numerous other large observatory instruments which were supplied world wide. For meridian instrumentfs he developed the ideas of Repsold and Lippman concerning respectively the personal equation and the application of photography to such instruments. WIth Périgaud, Hamy and Verschaffel, he developed the mercury bath and the printing chronograph used with them. The giant refracting telescope shown at the 1900 Universal Exhibition was of his making (1). Much of his production was carried out in collaboration with the Henry brothers for the optical part, although the fact that in a letter to L. J. Gruey, Director of the observatory at Besançon, he tells him that if the dispersion of a direct-vision spectroscope that he has supplied is insufficient he will send it to Duboscq to put in larger dispersion prisms, suggests that earlier he obtained his optical components from this maker (2). From 1899 to 1901 he was president of the Syndicat Patronal des Constructeurs en Instruments d'Optique & de Précision. In 1901 he made a new recording chronograph which was successfully tested in the Paris Observatory in the following year. In 1904 a similar instrument was installed in Nice Observatory (3). He was succeeded by Georges Prin (4).
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Notes biographiques
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1. Poincaré 1909, D3-4.'Un chef-d'œuvre de mécanique … l'ingéniosité du constructeur, et l'élégance des solutions nous ferait goûter … une sorte de plaisir estétique'.
2. Yvon 182; letter of 27 April 1885, archives of the Observatory of Besançon.
3. The instruments, and the testing of it, are described in detail in P. Boquet, 'Description du chronographe imprimant de M. P. Gautier', n.p. n.d. [1903/4].
4. For further details see Davoigneau 2024.
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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77, r. Denfert Rochererau Paris
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56, Bd Arago Paris 1889-1909
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Distinction
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Chevalier de la Légioin d'Honneur, 1889
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Membre artiste du Bureau des Longitudes 1897
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Relation
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Eichens William
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Prin George successor of Gautier
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Identifiant
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371
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ark:/18469/1q06g