-
Nom
-
Butterfield Michael
-
Date de naissance
-
c. 1645
-
Date de mort
-
28. 3. 1735
-
Lieu de naissance
-
London
-
Lieu de mort
-
Paris
-
Couverture temporelle
-
late 17th/early 18th century
-
Biographie
-
The workshop of Michael Butterfield (1635-1724) was probably one of the most substantial in Paris during the last quarter of the 17th century, that of Nicolas Bion emerging to challenge it in the last decade of the century. Butterfield himself was the son of a London shoemaker, Thomas Butterfield and his wife Elizabeth Latonnel. He probably arrived in France in 1663 and, 'aged about 20', was apprenticed for four years to Jean Choisy, a free founder and mathematical instrument maker on 14 August 1665 (1). Nothing is known of him before or after this date until 8 April 1672 when he took French nationality and a month later married Perrette Vernier. Previously he probably worked as a journeyman, but he was established as an independent maker of instruments in the Faubourg St Germain by 1677 when a notice of his new form of level appeared in the Journal des Sçavans (2), as did an announcement that he had succeeded in making an hygroscope that had been described in an earlier issue the same year. In the following years several other notices of his work concerning levels and hodometers appeared (3). Butterfield's levels were approved, and several were purchased for the royal building works.
Butterfield's inventiveness and skill quickly brought him into close contact with the Académie and its members. By November 1678 he already knew Huygens well enough to make him a present of coriander water (4). In 1679 he was making some highly specialised dialling instruments that had been recently published (5), and he described Cassini as 'my very good friend' in a letter of 1678 (6). For him in 1680 Butterfield constructed the two foot diameter silver celestial planisphere which was presented to the King. In 1683 he supplied Cassini with instruments for the operations which extended the arc of the meridian measurements to Bourges. In December 1696 he made repairs to, or adjusted, the marble globe at Meudon, and it was also he who oversaw the dividing of the meridian arcs for Coronelli's great globes destined to be placed at Marly in 1704 (7).
At an unknown date Butterfield became free of the Founders' Corporation in which he served as Juré from 1702-4 (8). He supplied instruments to the royal observatory, invented a new form of simple microscope and was particularly noted among contemporaries for his skill in mounting lode-stones and for his private collection of the different types thereof (9). It was however a working collection, and Butterfield carried out experiments and carefully observed the behaviour of his specimens. Nicolas Hartsoeker acknowledged in his discussion of magnetism that he had seen most of the experiments that he described thanks to Butterfield, and he reported some of Butterfield's observations (10). Butterfield's was one of the four instrument-making workshops visited by Peter the Great in 1717 (11). In 1698, alone among instrument -makers as far as is known, Butterfield obtained a grant of arms (12). Perhaps because they were esteemed his instruments could have a long life. One 1ft quadrant of his making belonged successively to Delisle, Messier, Zannoni and Darquier (13). Financially secure 15 May 1720, Butterfield paid 22000. livres for a house in the Faubourg La Villeneuve-sur- Gravois, Paris.
As Butterfield's investigations into magnetism show he had a wider interest in natural philosophy than just the production of instruments to be used in its service. In October 1678, he had written to Robert Hooke 'expressing his desire to correspond with [the Royal] Society concerning philosophical, mathematical, and mechanical matters; and offering to communicate such things, as he should meet with there (in Paris) of that kind'. The Society made an immediate response by ordering a copy of Halley's planisphere of the stars of the southern hemisphere to be sent to Butterfield when this was presented to it on 7 November (14). Martin Lister's visit to Butterfield in the summer of 1698 seemed to offer another chance of creating such a contact and a correspondence ensued. Even before leaving France, Lister wrote to Butterfield from Calais, the latter replying on 7 September with thanks to Lister for 'al his kindnesse that he hath had for us at Paris', and a promise to act for him in Paris whenever the need might arise. Butterfield's wife has been ill with dysentery, and he himself with an attack of gravel 'and have voided sum little red stones but they are not loadstones…'. (15).
The ten letters that have survived between 1698 and 1700 are primarily concerned with settling Lister's affairs in Paris, finding some peach trees for him and distributing copies of his book among his Paris acquaintance. Butterfield does however send some information about his magnetical activities, and promises larger accounts for the Royal Society. In an undated letter he asks if Lister could put him in touch with John Sellar with whom he would be glad to exchange news and information about mathematics and instruments (16). His request to Lister that 'you wil be pleased to pardon my bad English for I have not much used my natural language in Writing these many years' explains his sometimes eccentric orthography which might otherwise be attributed to an artisanal lack of education (17). By his wife Perrette Bernier, Butterfield had seven children between 1678 and 1688 - Jean Dominique (1678-87). Dorothée (b. 1 February 1681); Georges Michel (b. 30 September 1682); Jean Baptiste (b. 23 September 1683); Madeleine Françoise (5 April 1686-9 May 1763); Georges Michel ( b. 5 September 1687); Jacques Michel (b. 10 November 1688) (18).
Despite his wide-ranging activity, Butterfield is best known today for the portable horizontal dial to which his name became attached (19). After his death his shop lease and stock were purchased. by Jean François Langlois who would give them to his son Jean Jacques Langlois (a quondam apprentice of Butterfield), on the occasion of his marriage, 29 August 1728, with Anne Quillart (20).
-
Notes biographiques
-
1 Rocca & Launay 14, 16. Lister 82, who states 'Mr Butterfield is a right hearty honest Englishman', also says that he has been living in France for 35 years, so for at least two years before his. apprenticeship.
2 15 November 1677. According to Butterfield in his letter to the Royal Society pubished in the Phil Trans xii 1678, 1026, this account had been written by himself. This raises the presumption that other notices of his instruments in this journal were also written by him, perhaps with the connivance of Clause Comiers, a regular though often anonymous collaborator. with the Journal, with whom Butterfield was in close contact.
3 I December 1678 on another form of level; 5 December 1678 on a hodometer; 4 August 1681 more on his hodometer; 29 November 1683, notice that he sells Duval's thermometer in association with Duhamel.
4 Œuvres xiii, 2 716. The gift was made since Huygens was engaged in microscopical investigations of infusoria for which he had developed a new type of simple microscope, a form of which Butterfield made. See Turner 2005, 43.
5 C***, Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à tracer facilement les cadrans solaires sur toutes sortes de surfaces planes…, Paris 1679, 53. The instruments of C's invention were a 'cadran cyclique', a rule for drawing the basic figure and a device for setting the gnomon. 'C' is almost certainly Claude Comiers (16**-1693).
6 Phil Trans; xii 1678, 1027. Butterfield's closeness with Cassini is confirmed bby the lattter's presence in the funeral procession of Butterfield's nine year old son Jean Dominique on 30 May 1687. BN Ms Na fr 12060 (Collection Léon Laborde 23), entry 9155.
7 See entries for payments for these activities and others in Guiffrey, sv . index. The silver planisphere incorporated a geared mechanism which permitted the equivalence of the three main world systems, Ptomemy, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, to be demonstrated. On its reverse the stars visble at the latitude of Paris were shown.
8 Augarde 66.
9 Lister 83-4. Butterfield's skill in this field was still remarked upon over half a century later by J. A. Nollet, himself no mean craftsman, in his L'Art des expériences…, new revised edition, 3 vols 1770;
10 Nicolas Hartsoeker, Principes de physique, Paris 1696, 205-6.
11 Kniajetska & Chenakal.
12 D'azur à un monde d'or ceintre et croisé d'argent, Charles d'Hozier, Armorial général de la France, Généralité de Paris N°. 307, 3 January 1698.
13 Darquier viii.
14 Birch, iii, 432-33; 434.
15 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Lister ms 3, f56r.
16 Ibid. ms Lister 37 f 3.
17 Ibid. ma Lister 3 f 66.
18 BN Ms Na fr 12060 (Collection Léon Laborde 23), entry 9153-57. 9159.
19. For several examples by Butterfield and other makers, see Delalande 2013, 178-207.
20. Rocca & Launay 18 & n. 66
-
Bibliographie
-
'Niveav de la nouvvelle invention du Sieur Butterfield …', Journal des Sçavans 1677 227-8 (mispaginated 204); 1678 440-43.
'Extracts from a letter from…, about the making of Microscopes with very small and single Glasses: and some other Instruments' Philosophical Transactions, xii 1678, 1026-7.
'Odometre de la façon dv Sieur Butterfield', Journal des Sçavans 5 December 1678; 414-16.
L'Vsage dv novveau Microscope, fait avec une seule et tres-petite Boule de Verre, n.p. [Paris], 1679 (1).
'Odometre nouvveav de la façon dv Sieur Butterfield', Journal des Sçavans 4 August 1681, 353-4.
Description et Usage du cadran à Boussole portatif universel Depuis enuiron le 54e degré d'elevation du Pole jusqu'à environ le 41e degré de l'élevation; c'est à dire le Nord d'Angleterre jusqu'au Sud d'Italie, & pour tous les Pays renfermez entre ces deux terres ou elevations, Paris, n.d.[1701/2] (2).
Another issue. with magnetic declination value of 11° [c. 1711] (3).
'Part of a Letter from… Paris, Sept. 7. 1698 to Dr Martin Lister… concerning Magnetical Sand', Philosophical Transactions, xx, 1698, 336.
1. A prospectus of which copies are preserved in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, and the Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève, Paris( 4° Z-1967). A copy of it was in the library of John Locke, who met Butterfield in Paris in August 1677. See Felix Waldmann, 'The Library of John Locke: additions, corrigenda, and a conspectus of Pressmarks', The Bodleian LIbrary Record, xxvi 2013, 36-58 (40, N° 1991).
2. Small folio broadsheet printed on both sides of which a copy is in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal,Paris (Ms 676 f 306). The date is based on the magnetic declination value of 8°15' at Paris mentioned in the text.
3. Copies in the Adler Planetarium, Chicago (QB215.D47 OVSZ);Bibl. Bayern (11519855); Bibl. Mun de Rennes (56583/3).
-
Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
-
Rue Neuve des Fossés, Faubourg St Germain Paris, 'Au Roy d'Angleterre'. 1677-78
-
Rue Neuve des Fossés, Faubourg St Germain Paris, ' Aux armes d'Angleterre'. 1679
-
Quai de l'Horloge Paris 'from 1681 onwards', ' Aux armes d'Angleterre' .
-
Identifiant
-
1282
-
ark:/18469/1r8xg