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Nom
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Arsandaux, Jean Philippe
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Date de naissance
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c. 1723
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Date de mort
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? between 1782 and 1789
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Couverture temporelle
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late 18th century
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Couverture spatiale
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Paris
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Biographie
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Son of the clockmaker Jean Arsandaux (d. 1762) (1), Jean Philippe Arsandaux became free in the Paris corporation of clockmakers as ‘fils de Maître’ (master’s son) on 31 May 1743. Until his father’s death he seems to have worked with him as a journeyman. Immediately, on 2 September 1762, he took Claude Simon Suzanne as an apprentice, probably his first, and another, Jean Nicolas Leblond in 1769. At an unknown date Jean Philippe Arsandaux married Marie Madeleine Vaugondy, daughter of the royal geographer, map, and globe-maker Gilles Robert Vaugondy (1688-1766) whose brother Jean Vaugondy (b. 1702), was an enameller working for several leading Paris clockmakers. Possibly it was his father-in-law who drew Arsandaux’s attention to questions of astronomy and navigation. At an unknown date he made a hand-operated planetarium that was deposited in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in 1814(2). The problem of longitude determination led him to develop a weight-driven marine timekeeper. This he entered in the prize competition organised by the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1771, and it was tried at sea in the frigate La Flore together with two machines by Pierre Le Roy, one by Biesta, and Berthoud N° 8, although this was not in the competition, together with other instruments for navigation. The going of Arsandaux’s time-piece was extremely irregular, varying from a gain of 6 seconds per day to a loss of 59 seconds throughout the voyage. At least partially this was caused by ineffective temperature compensation. The machine also stopped several times because of a overly complicated winding system. By contrast the ingenious suspension in which Arsandaux mounted his clock gained general approva (3).
That a major defect of Arsandaux’s marine timekeeper was its temperature compensation may be the reason that in the following years he turned his attention to making pyrometers. Three signed examples of these have survived. One (4), with an horizontally placed dial, is identical with that described by Jean-André Nollet (5). For the second (6), with dial placed vertically, Arsandaux claimed paternity signing it ‘Arsandaux Invenit Fecit’. Devoid of decoration it may be a prototype. The third (7) is a similar model with vertically placed dial, but more decoratively presented no doubt as a commercial model. Such researches, and others if a quarter-repeating verge watch with an unusual balance spring adjustment is to be ascribed to him (8), were not conducive to financial stability. Arsandaux was declared bankrupt in 1780 (9). Thereafter little is known. His name appears in the list of Paris clockmakers for 1782, but is absent from that for 1789 (10). Presumably he had died, or moved out of the city, in the interim.
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Notes biographiques
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1. Funeral ticket transcribed in the Fiches Brateau.
2. For a description see King & Millburn 1976, 302.
3. Verdun de la Crenne, Borda, and Alexandre Pingrée, Voyage fait … en 1771 et 1772 … pour vérifier l’utilité de plusieurs méthodes et instruments servant à déteriner la latitude et la longitude tant du vaisseau que de côtes, îles et écueils … suivi de recherches pour rectifier les cartes hydrographiques, Paris 1778. The results are summarised in Jean Le Bot, Quand l’art de naviguer devenait science, les chronomètres de marinf français au XVIIIe siècle, Grenoble 1983, 172.
4.. Collège Gambetta, Cahors.
5. J.-A. Nollet, L’Art des expériences, ou, avis aux amateurs de la physique, 3 vols, Paris 1770, iii 144 and pl. vi.
6. Musée des Arts & Métiers, CNAM inv.
7. Lycée Alain Fournier, Bourges.
8. Movement only, in a private collection
9. The list of a transfer of estate duties in AN lxxxii-574 is probably to be related with this.
10. Liste 1782 ; Liste 1789.
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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Quay des Ormes, (parish of St Gervais), Paris 1769
Rue des Nonandières [Nonnains-d’Hyères (4e)] 1772
Rue de l’Etoile, au Coin du Port St Paul, (Liste 1778; Alm Général des Marchands, 1778, 1779
Rue de la Verrerie, Paris (AN lxxxii-574) 1780
Rue Montorgueil, Paris (Liste 1781, 1783) 1781, 1783
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Identifiant
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659
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ark:/18469/1sqhn