|
French inventor and engineer who submitted one of the first patents for a working motorcycle in 1869. Louis-Guillaume Perreaux showed an early interest in engineering, inventing a cane gun (a type of walking stick with a gun concealed inside) at the age of 12. He was then sent to the Minor Seminary of Sees where he formed the ideas that were later published in his first book in 1877, the two-volume Lois de l'univers principe de la création (Laws of the Universe), which is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He secured a scholarship to the School of Arts and Crafts at Châlons-sur-Marne in 1836. Perreaux moved to Paris, where he began working on and patenting a range of inventions including a multi-chambered gun, a lock mechanism in 1841, a circular power saw in 1843 and scientific instruments such as the Perreaux Dividing Machine, invented in 1846. Perreaux experimented with a small steam engine in a bicycle frame, contributing to the invention of the first motorcycle. The original machine is on display in the Musée de l’Île-de-France at the Château de Sceaux. One of Perreaux's last inventions was in 1879 "system of military tent poles without external cables and without pickets". As well as being much more rigid than conventional tents, Perreaux's design claimed to be simpler, lighter and therefore transportable for military use. He also proposed that several of his square-tent designs could be erected together to form a gallery. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
variant spelling: PERREAUX, Louis Guillaume |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| History |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DMG-Lib
Europeana