Fortin, Jean Baptiste
Contenu
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Nom
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Fortin, Jean Baptiste
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Date de naissance
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2 December 1740
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Date de mort
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16 October 1817
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Lieu de mort
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Bagneux
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Couverture temporelle
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2/2 18th century
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Couverture spatiale
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Paris
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Biographie
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Perhaps a member of the clock-making family Fortin, members of which, like him, worked in the rue de la Harpe. Jean Baptiste was a noted specialist in the making of globes and spheres with, from c. 1772 a royal appointment (1). According to his successor Delamarche, he was the first in France to undertake the manufacture of telluria such as were described by James Ferguson (2). In 1772 he petitioned the Minister controlling the trades of Paris for a warrant of immunity from the pretensions of the corporations of Paper-makers who were attacking him for not being a member of their corporations. The report on his petition made by Lalande and Grandjean de Fouchy stated that Fortin was then the only craftsman in Paris who undertook the mounting of globes and spheres and that he alone was employed by the Académie des Sciences. In 1778 he purchased the map and globe stock of Gilles Robert de Vaugondy (qv) which he sold to Charles-Franìois Delamarche (qv) in 1786. In 1784 Fortin purchased a property in Bagneux of which village he became Mayor in 1793 and 1794 and where he died without children leaving his property to his wife Marie Guériot (3). The catalogue of his production appended to his 1770 treatise on the armillary sphere lists globes and spheres from 3 to 12 pouces in a variety of mounts, a planisphere, the astronomical calendar of De Gaulle, an eclipse demonstrator ('Mécaneclipse') based on the calculations of Philippe de la Hire and de la Caille and an equation of time machine for setting clocks.
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Notes biographiques
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1 Tablettes 1772.
2 Delamarche 9.
3 Pedley 118 & 124.
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Bibliographie
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Principaux usages de la sphère armillaire, de la sphère de Copernic et des globes célestes et terrestres. Construit par le sieur Fortin, Ingénieur-mécanicien pour les Globes & Sphères, rue de la Harpe, près celle du Foin, Paris, 1770
Usages du planétaire ou sphère mouvante de Copernic. Construit par le Sieur Fortin, Ingénieur-mécanicien du Roi, pour les Gobes & Sphères, rue de la Harpe, près celle du Foin, Paris 1773
Atlas Céleste de Flamsteed approuvé par l'Académie Royale des Sciences et publié sous le privilège de cette compagnie, seconde édition, Paris, 1776
Atlas Céleste de Flamsteed, publié en 1776 par J. Fortin,…, 3rd edition, revised and corrected by Delalande & Méchain, Paris (Delamarche), 1795.
Portuguese translation of the last by Francisco Antonio Ciera & Gomes Villa-Boas, Lisbon, 1804
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Identifiant
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1650
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ark:/18469/1sxjv