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Nom
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Hubin
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Date de mort
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pre November 1703
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Lieu de mort
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Paris
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Couverture temporelle
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1670-1703
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Biographie
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Hubin was an English(1) enameller, with a French royal appointment, specialised in the production of meteorological instruments and air-pumps, the latter perhaps because he was friendly with Denis Papin. He also made table fountains and clepsydrae, some of the former being designed by Claude Comiers who exhibited them at the Académie des Sciences. Several of these were described in a pamphlet published in 1673 in which he also accused the clockmaker René Grillet (qv) of having plagiarized him. The same year he helped Christiaan Huygens to convert his barometer into a thermometer (2). In 1674 and 1675 he was working on a ‘machine des Fables d’Aesope’, and in 1678 he made a thermometer, with a 2 inch diameter bulb and a 4 ft long tube modelled on one of those in Florence, which La Hire installed in the Observatory (3). In the same year he was visited by John Locke who tested the behaviour of water constrained in evacuated sealed tubes (4). In the same period he worked with Mariotte on the experiments on air made with a barometer which Mariotte subsequently reported in his De la Nature de l’air (1679). Early in 1682 Hubin. visited. London where he showed three experiments to the Royal Society where they were all adjudged old and already seen (5). The experiments made with Marriotte, building on those of Torricelli, to demonstrate the existence of the vacuum and the nature of air supplied material for lecture-demonstrations given by Hubin in his shop. On 28 January 1684, the young Duc de Bourbon, accompanied by his tutor Isaac Martineau, attended one of them (6). Later the same year, in September, Couplet, and a young Chinese whom he had brought to France, would do the same thing.(6)
During the early 1680s Hubin was experimenting with, and modifying, Papin’s ‘Digestor’ his results in this field being displayed to the Académie des Sciences. He was sufficiently well-known for this work that, in announcing the English edition of Papin’s book on the digestor, the contributor to the Journal des Sçavans noted that Hubin found it superior to the Latin edition. Shortly afterwards the success of Hubin’s experiments on softening bones in the version of the digestor that he had made were reported in the same journal. In the same year he wrote an unpublished account ‘Observations de demonstrations des experiences, sur la pesanteur et legerté des liqueurs 1681’. (7). He supplied aerometers to the Paris Observatory. Hubin’s differential barometer was known to Robert Hooke who in February 1686 proposed an improvement to it at a meeting of the Royal Society (8). In 1687 a new hygrometer designed by Amontons and made by Hubin was shown at the Académie des Sciences by both the designer and the maker. In July 1688 he supplied two thermometers and two barometers to Sedileau and Cusset at the Observatory for use in their observations of rain-water and its evaporation.8 Amontons acknowledged his help in the development of the instruments that he devised although despite Hubin's skill only a few were sold (9). In addition Hubin was a specialist maker of glass eyes. Martin Lister visited him in 1698 and commented on the ‘Drawers full of all sorts of Eyes’ that he saw admirable for the contrivance, to match with great exactness any Iris whatsoever; This being a Case where mismatching is intolerable (10) [ add from BN ms n a fr 5147]
P.-D. Huet to Chasigné 19 Nov 1703, cited in Tolmer 496. Hubin had supplied Huet, the learned Bishop of Avranches who himself had invented a form of anemometer, ibid.
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Notes biographiques
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1 Taylor I, 266 entry 363a without evidence but perhaps following B.L. Sl ms 1775 ff156v-61.
2 Huy O. C. vii, 261-2.
3 Lough 187-8.
3 Louis Cotte, Traité de metéorologie, Paris 1774, 111.
4 Archives de Chantilly P xciv f. 358, letter of Deschamps, cited from Mormiche.
5. Birch iv 162.
5 Mercure Galant September 1684, cited from Mormiche n. 23.
6 British Library Sloane ms 1775 ff . 156v-161.
7 Birch iv 455.
8 Guiffrey iii 125. Cf. iv 129.
9 Nollet, Leçons, iv 397.
10 Lister,
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Bibliographie
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Machines nouvellement exécutées et en partie invenées par le sieur Hvbin, Emailleur ordinaire du Roy. Première partgie ov se trouvent Une Clepsudre, deux zymo ¶simetres, un Peze liqueur, & un Thermometre. Avec quelques Observations faites à Orleans, sur les qualitez de l'Air, & particulierement sur sa pesanteur, Paris, 1673. (Notice in Journal des Sçavans 17 December 1674).
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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r St Martin, devant la rue aux Ours (1673) Paris Publication
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r St Denis, devant la rue aux Ours, Paris (1692) Paris Publication
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Identifiant
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921
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ark:/18469/1r073