1763

c. 1798

late 18th century

Putois was working as an optician from 1780 and succeeded to the business and premises of Marianne Marie in c.1786. In 1785, Grateloup, who had conceived a new way of making achromatic lenses using a resin of terebenthine, approached Putois to realise his idea, and the two worked together throughout the following year. In 1787 Grateloup read a memoir on the subject to the Académie des Sciences,1 and his process was adopted by other opticians including Lerebours, Rochette and Carochez. The invention was rewarded in 1794 by awards to Grateloup and Putois respectively of 6000 and 5000 livres. At an unknown date before 1790 Putois visited London where he saw Blair's liquid lens in Adams' workshop and subsequently tried to develope it in France. If his attempts were not very successful they may nonetheless have aided the opticians who successfully made lenses of this type a decade or so later. He was among the small number of opticians who manufactured Rochon's prismatic mircometer.2

1 It was subsequently published as Mémoire sur l'optique, 1788.
2 Daumas 375-6; Lalande 'Histoire abrégée', 744.

1786 - : 67, Quai de l'Horloge Paris, Au Griffon.
1807: 19, Quai de l'Horloge Paris.
1808-21: 81, Quai de l'Horloge Paris.

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