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Nom
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Fortin, Nicolas
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Date de naissance
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9 August 1750
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Date de mort
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1831
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Lieu de naissance
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Mouchy-la-Ville, Îlle de France
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Lieu de mort
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Paris
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Couverture temporelle
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late 18th - early 19th century
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Biographie
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Fortin seems to have arrived in Paris c. 1770. In 1778 and 1779 he showed a double piston air-pump to the Académie des Sciences, and a double barrel pump is in Florence. In 1780 he made a straight-line dividing engine. One of the commissioners appointed by the Académie des Sciences to examine his air pump was Lavoisier who, in 1783, ordered thermometers from Fortin. This was the start of a collaboration which continued until Lavoisier’s execution in 1794. During this period Fortin developed an impermeable tissue for hot-air balloons (1784), took part in the experiments on the decomposition of water for which he supplied some of the apparatus, and made an electro-static machine which could be used in a vaccum (1785). In 1788 he made Lavoisier’s large precision balance with a beam 3 feet in length, an instrument which became the model for precision balances for at the least the next thirty years, and immediately afterwards instruments for the study of the combustion of oils and ether. In June 1789 he supplied a complex apparatus for studying fermentation, and in 1792 instruments for use in the experiments being conducted by the new Commission des Poids et Mesures (1). Among his sub-contractors was the enamelist Jean Vaugondy, uncle of the globe- and map-maker Didier Robert de Vaugondy (2).
In 1787 Fortin, probably thanks to Lavoisier, was apointed ‘Ingénieur breveté du Roi' in the new élite corporation of instrument-makers (3). Like Etienne Lenoir (qv), Fortin was an active collaborator in the work of the Commission des Poids et Mesures and the Commission Temporaire des Arts. For the former he made a precision balance, a comparator and several models and standards for the the new metric weights. He also made at least three standard metres (4). In 1791 he was a signatory to the founding constitution of the Société des Inventions et Découvertes (5). During the Revolutionary years and later, Fortin supplied precision balances to such public institutions as the mint, the Museum of Natural History and the Ecole Polytechnique. Several of these have survived (5). In 1793 he ocupied premises within the the old abbey of Ste Geneviève where he was assisted by his daughter Louise and two employees. In 1794 he received an award from the Bureau de Consultation, a medal from the Lycée des Arts (6). In the same year he was appointed with Berthollet and Charles to make an inventory of Lavoisier's instruments. At a date probably around 1800, and certainly before 1809, Fortin invented the cistern for portable barometers which allows the level of the mercury in the cylinder to be adjusted so that its surface is precisely at zero on the scale. This arrangement was named after him and it is for this innovation that he is best known today. His fruitful cooperation with savants continued. He made Gay-Lussac’s apparatus for the study of the dilation of gases and that used by Duly and Arago to verify the applicability of Marriotte’s law at high pressures. The two barometers and thermometers used by d’Aubuisson and Mallet to measure the height of Mt. Gregorio near Piemont in the Alps were also of his construction (7)
It was perhaps his association with Arago that led Fortin into the fields of astronomy and optics in which previously he had worked little, if at all. For Arago he made a remarkable repeating circle, the astronomical circle which Arago used with Humboldt, and ocular micrometers of Arago’s design in 1810, besides equatorial and transit telescopes. For Freycinet’s voyage in the Urania (1817-20) he supplied a variation compass and three clocks although the latter are unlikely to have been of his own making. In 1819 a new 2m mural circle was ordered from him for the Observatoire de Paris, where it was set up in 1822 and remained n service until 1860, For the same establishment he made two invariable pendula. In 1819 he was awarded a gold medal at the Industrial Exhibition (8). Copies of the toise de Pérou were made by him in 1821 and 1823 respectively for Schumaker and for Bessel at the Observatory of Königsberg (9). Most of these instruments were produced using the dividing engine and sphereometer that he had designed and made himself. For the half century from 1780 to 1830, spanning the years of Revolution and Empire, Fortin may be ranked with Lenoir (qv.), as the leading maker of the day, a fact recognised by his appointment to the Bureau des Longitudes (10), and also clearly acknowledged in the report of the 1819 exhibition. '…devoting himself to the construction of instruments for physics, [Fortin], by his talent, has seconded the work of French physicians who have changed the aspect of phybsics and created modern chemistry. With rare skill, he constructed the instruments which served for mots of the experiments and numerical determinations which today lie at the foundation of these sciences, determinations which required the use of instruments both precise and delicate. He has also made angle measuring instruments,…' (11).
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Notes biographiques
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1 For Fortin's collaboration with Lavoissier see Daumas (Lav) 134,150-2.
2. Pedley 39.
3. Daumas (corp).
4. For the two of these which in 1817 were sent to England for comparison with the standard yard see Kater in Philosophical Transactions 1818. For a list of items constructed by Fortin at this time see Lavoissier Œuvres vi 674.
5. CDD 49.
6. In addition to those listed by Daumas 366 n 2, see two in Alain Brieux, Catalogue. 5 Lalande 744. For his petition fro a national recompense 9 June 1792 see Archives C NAM P202, the detailed report of which contains very full descriptions of the devices upon which his claim was based.
7 . For a detailed description of them see J. N.Hachette, Programme d'un cours de physique…, Paris 1809, 221-5: Middleton 199, 210-13.
8. Costaz 256.
9. Wolf (poids) 54.
10. Account based on Daumas 3Z65-8 and DFB augmented as indicated. For fuller details of his work on the standard metric weights see Wolf (poids) and Bigourdan (metric).
11. Costaz 255
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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Place Beaurepaire (formerly Sorbonne), 1793 (CDD, 37).
14, r des Amandiers Ste Genevi Paris Azur 1824; Par.Ind. 1831 (575)
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rue de la Montagne 41, Pantheon Paris Almanach du Commerce
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Montagne Ste Genevi Paris DBF
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42, r des Amandiers-Ste Geneviève, Paris de Thury & Migneron 320
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1808: 14, rue des Amandiers S Geneviève Paris Almanach du Commerce, 199.
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Exposition année ; ville ; type ; récompense
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1819 Paris Exposition Industrie Nationale Gold medal
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Identifiant
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100
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ark:/18469/1q3s8