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Nom
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Baradelle, Jacques Nicolas (sometimes given as Nicolas Jacques)
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Date de naissance
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August 1700
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Date de mort
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30 May 1779
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Lieu de mort
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Paris
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Couverture temporelle
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Mid-18th century.
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Biographie
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Son of a clock-maker, Nicolas Baradelle, and Madeleine Guerrou, Baradelle was apprenticed successively in the Founder’s Company 14 June 1717 to Nicolas La Butte, then 29 June 1717 to Jacques Le Maire and subsequently 24 April 1719 to Nicolas Bion (1) He became free before June 1724 when he took his first apprentice, and on 21 February 1725 he married Marie Maurice, daughter of a master of arts in the university. Among the witnesses signing the marriage contract were Jacques I Cassini, Director of the Paris Observatory, his god-father and Nicolas Couplet, Perpetual Secretary of the Académie Royale des sciences (2). When Baradelle took his second apprentice in June 1725 he had moved to the Quai de l’Horloge, subsequently working on the same Quai ‘A l’Observatoire’, a sign that he adopted by way of hommage to Cassini. Already in 1728 Baradelle was making unusual instruments such as a 'baguette' and a 'compas pithométrique' for use in gauging (3). Marie Maurice having died in 1727, in 1730 Baradelle remarried with the widow Marie Denise Simon with whom he had three children one being Nicolas Alexandre (qv). In the mid-1730s he developed his portable vertical sundial, usable without a compass (4). In 1740 he issued a terrestrial globe dedicated to the Dauphin based on the recent observations of members of the Académie des Sciences, following this ten years later with its celestial pair. To facilitate globe-making in late 1742 he gave special instruction to one of his workmen for the mounting of the printed gores onto the globe-sphere. The range of his production and retail stock is indicated by the fine trade card published in 1744. Numerous instruments have survived bearing the signature Baradelle although ascription of them to one or other member of the family is not always possible. A case of silver drawing instruments carrying the Paris hallmark for the period 1726-32, which belonged to the architect Brongniart, was later in the collection of the Baron Pichon and is now in a private collection, may however be ascribed to him with certainty. At an unknown date, but apparently first mentioned in 1727, he invented a form of portable ink-pot which preserved the ink from drying up for several years and avoided it spilling to which his name became attached (5). He made Savérien's new instrument for observing the stars at sea and describes himself as 'Ingénieur du Roi in the advertizement for this (6), and in January 1755 he advertised that he had improved the construction of artificial magnets so that now he could make them to carry weights from 1 to 100 livres (7). The same year (9 July) he established a pension with Claudine Nicole le Redde (8), whom he had married in 1744. With her he would have Nicolas Eloy (qv) and Louis Jacques (qv). No doubt to order, Baradelle is known to have made at least two medical instruments (9). In 1778 he sold the greater part of his stock to his third son, Louis Jacques and retired to the Rue St Anne (10).
Apprentices
1724. Antoine Jazet who abandoned his apprenticeship after one year.
1725 Jean Duvalle
1731. Louis François Treuffat
1739 April François Antoine Baradelle, a cousin
1739. Jacques Nicolas Guyot
1746. Louis Isaac Jouvenet, turned over from A. Lasnier (11).
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Notes biographiques
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1. Augarde 68.
2. Augarde 60-1.
3. Anonymous. Traite de jaugeage, ou le jaugeage réduit à des principes generaux & géométriques, & à une pratique courte et facile, 1728. Advt on verso of the title-page.
4. This is probably the printed paper vertical 'Capucin' dial of which a number of examples have survived (Sotheby's New York 14 October 2004, lot 781 (drawn for Rouen and Reims), Aguttes 17 May 2023 lot 660 (drawn for Paris). THe dial was announced in the Mémoires de Trévoux August 1738, pp. 1715-16, and May 1739, 1135-36), as also in the Journal historique sur les maières du tems,xliii 1738, 197-8.
5. Rocca & Launay; Trade card 1744 ; Tablettes… 1772 under ‘Fondeurs’, ‘pour…petites écritoires portatives à compartiemnt, connues sous le nom d’écritoires à la Baradel, dont il est inventeur’, and under ‘mathématiciens’ where he is described as ‘l’un des plus connus pour les instrumens de Mathématiques’. For 'Baradelle' N° 1321, a rectangular model, see Tesseract 109, N° 23.
6. Affiches, 2 October 1752, 614.
7. Affiches, 2 January 1755.
8. Fiches Brateau.
9. Mercure de France September 1751, 99-100; Bibliothèque des Sciences et des Beaux Arts, xxviii 1767, 226-30.
10. For a more detailed account see Rocca & Launay.
11. LIst established after Rocca & Launay.
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Bibliographie
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Description et usage du cadran à boussole universel et portatif, 1747.
Description et usage d’un calendrier qui se met sur les faces d’un porte-crayon à compas, Paris, 1750 (1).
1. Lalande 443 art 8.
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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Quai de l'Horloge du palais (Quai des Morfondus) Paris A l'Observatoire Globe terrestre, 1740. Affiches 2. 10. 52, 614
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Identifiant
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783
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ark:/18469/1qvhb