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Nom
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Redier Antoine
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Date de naissance
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25 December 1817
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Date de mort
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30 December 1892
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Lieu de naissance
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Perpignan
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Lieu de mort
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Melun
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Couverture temporelle
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2/4-4/4 19th century
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Couverture spatiale
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Paris
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Biographie
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Born in Perpignan, the son of the clock-maker Jean Auguste Rédier (d. 1859) and Elisabeth Vial (d. 1856), Redier here attended the local college. He began his career working in his father's shop before being summoned to Paris in 1832 by the astronomer François Arago (1786-1853) whose family had long been acquainted with the Vial/Rédiers. In Paris, Rédier won a scholarship to the school of horology run by Louis Fréderic Perrelet (1781-1854)1 where he remained for four years before working for three years with Henri Robert (qv ) with whose son he established a close friendship.
Conscripted into the army in 1839, Rédier was able to buy himself out a few months later with fees earned for realising an invention of the optician Duplex (qv ). He was converted to Catholicism by Sophie, the Mother Superior of the Couvent des Oiseaux (r de Sèvres), the clocks of which he maintained, and it was with financial support from this convent and from the Jesuits, that he was able in 1843 to purchase the horological business of Duchemin in the Place du Châtelet.
Inventive and industrious, Rédier made many innovations, took out nearly a hundred patents, and regularly exhibited in International and National exhibitions between 1844 and 1878. The small 8-day duration pendulum clocks that he developed and of which hundreds of thousands were sold provoked something of a revolution in the Paris horological trade. But he was also strongly interested in meteorological recording instruments. In 1863 he was appointed Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur progressing to 'officier' in 1878. At the exhibition of that year he showed a series of meteorological instruments of his own invention for which he received a prize, and a range of devices that he had executed for other inventors including the 'revolver photographique' of Janssen, a modification of Thomson's electrometer by Mascart, and the aneroid barometer of Vidie. When not an exhibitor, Rédier was frequently a jury member of the exhibitions.
Despite Rédier's interest in precision instruments, especially in self-registering instruments2, the basis of his commerce was the manufacture of alarm-clocks which from 1883 onwards in association with his son Louis, he manufactured at St Nicolas d'Alièrement. He also produced an attractive 8-day duration, poly-chrome enamelled terrestrial globe-clock in which the globe carrying the hour-scale turned against a fixed pointer. Twice married, Rédier was the father of fourteen children.3
According to his younger contemporary, Alfred Beillard, , who would from time to time lunch with Redier and other leading clockmakers such as Saunier, Callier, Theodore Leroy, Augustin, and Charpentier at the home of Pierret, Redier carried his 76 years lightly. 'Always gay and often caustic, full of spirit, always. with a mirth-making quip; a frank and loyal personage having a large head which, with its long locks, somewhat recalled that of Mirabeau; one rejoiced in advance at the pleasure to be with him'. 4
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Notes biographiques
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1 For whom see Tardy 509. His school opened in 1832 with six pupils and closed in 1840.
2 Eg a recording thermograph, 1877, Bonhams 18.5. 2016 lot 33.
3 This account is based primarily on an unpublished memoir by Francis Astié, 'Un homme du XIXe siècle, Antoine Redier (1817-1892), horloger'; the notice in La Nature, 21, 1893, 1 107; and the notice by Pierre in Bulletin de la Société d'Encouragement de l'Industrie , 1893.
4 Beillard 273.
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Bibliographie
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'Nouveau compas à diviser le cercle en une nombre quelconque de parties égales', 1835.
'Note sur un nouveau moyen de transmettre à distance l'heure rigoureuse d'un lieu', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 1860
'Compteur pour les liquides', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 1861
'Mémoire sur la pendule conique et sur les nouveaux instruments chronométriques auquel il est appliqué', 1861
'Les récompenses de la classe 23 [horlogerie] à l'exposition Universelle de 1867', 1867
'L'Origine de quelques expressions employées dans l'horlogerie', L'Almanach-Annuaire artistique et historique des h
orlogers, orfèvres, bijoutiers, opticiens, 11e année, 1869
'Le Baromètre, son histoire, ses constructions diverses ses usages', L'Almanach-Annuaire artistique et historique des horlogers, orfèvres, bijoutiers, opticiens, 11e année, 1869
reprinted separately as
Le Baromètre, son histoire, ses constructions diverses ses usages, 1869, another issue 1875.
'Un chapelet d'horlogers: Conte lu au Banquet annuel de lka Chambre syndicale de l'Horlogerie', Paris 21 janvier 1875.
'Note sur la correction des variations de marche des pendules astronomiques provenant des différences de pression atmosphérique', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, lxxxiii 1876, 1174-75 excerpted in the Philosophical Magazine iii 1877, 80.
'Rapport fait par... sur un appareil de phare pour feu de direction, muni d'ecrans pivotants, système von Otter, combiné et exécuté par Mm. Henry-Lepaute fils', Société pour l'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale, 1881.
'Obturateur chronométrique pour la photographie de M. P. Boca', Journal de l'horlogerie Française: Bulletin de la Chambre Syndicale de Paris et de son école professionelle, ii 1882, 10-13.
'Cadrature de pendule à quarts', Journal de l'horlogerie Française: Bulletin de la Chambre Syndicale de Paris et de son école professionelle, ii 1882, 56-58.
'Nécrologie. M. Paul Brocot', Journal de l'horlogerie Française: Bulletin de la Chambre Syndicale de Paris et de son école professionelle, ii 1882, 95.
Nouveau Baromètre à mercure, 1886
Calcul des engrenages
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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1842: 2, Place du Châtelet Paris
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16, Cours des Petits Ecuries Paris 1855
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1868- : 8, Cours des Petits Ecuries, Paris
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Identifiant
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2637
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ark:/18469/1sh40