Benazir Bhutto

Clear Gaspard François Marie Rich of Prony , born with Chamelet (the Rhone) the July 22nd 1755 and died in Asnières-sur-Seine the July 29th 1839, is a Engineer, hydraulician and Encyclopédiste French.

The assistant of Perronet

Wire of a magistrate elected at the Parliament of the Dombes, Prony, after traditional studies of letters, studied mathematics for 18 months and makes a success of the contest of the Highways Departments (April 5th, 1776). He exerted initially various missions in province, in particular the countryside of the Sables of Olonne (1779) which was worth the patent of assistant engineer to him. Bourges, Nickel silver, Dourdan, Lagny, transfer it in this quality to govern the clothes industry of several work. Soon he was recalled to Paris by the minister Calonne at the request of Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, director of the school of the Highways Departments (1783), which, already old, had felt the need to have near him an assistance to which to recover some from the care of the details. Prony consolidated its favor at Perronet while being posed as a defender of the bridge of Neuilly. This construction of Perronet had just been the object of criticism severe in a report presented to the Academy of Science, where it had not been without producing some feeling. Prony took the defense of the project successfully, consolidating several members of the Academy who had taken part in the plan of the bridge or had sanctioned it of their approval. Gaspard Monge, in particular, testified its satisfaction to him by initiating it itself with the theory to the curves envelopes and the partial derivative equations.

It is Prony which had the principal share with the restoration of the wearing of Dunkirk (1785), although Perronet officially governed this work; and, being then at the edge of the Handle, it went on a journey in England, from where it brought back several observations on the methods geodetic and topographic, published in two volumes:

Description of the average employees to measure the base of Honslow-Heath in the province of Middlesex , translated from English of the general Roy, Paris, 1787, in-4°;
Description of the operations made in England to determine the respective positions of the observatories of Greenwich and Paris , Paris, 1795, in-4°;

He was the same for much in work of the bridge of Bridge-Holy-Maxence on the Oise. He was also number of those to which the studies for the bridge Louis XVI had been entrusted; and these finished studies, it allowed with deliberative voice with the discussion which had place with the Highways Departments, then was employed with construction with the patent of inspector (March 23rd, 1787). He worked four more years at the sides of Perronet, cumulating the advantages of his position at the school and the salaries of inspector.

Under the Revolution

The land register

August 21st, 1791, appointed chief engineer of the department of the the Eastern Pyrenees, and by là-même threatened to lose the benefit of its office plurality of activities, it puts all works about it to avoid leaving Paris. As the Constituent Assembly has just voted the general Cadastre of France, it succeeds in being made name (October 6th, 1791) directing land register. It largely poses the bases of them (too largely even with the dires of some), and especially too slowly with the eyes of those which see in the land register the means of sitting the Tax on land.

As for its activity of teacher, if Prony still remains some time at the school of the Highways Departments, it is without official title and remuneration.

Tables of logarithms of the Observatory

Parallel to work of the land register, there made go of face since 1792 the clothes industry of gigantic the Table of logarithms to fourteen, nineteen and twenty-five decimals, remained handwritten with the Observatoire of Paris, and which since were to be used for astronomical calculations. They are, on the one hand, the logarithms from 1 to 200.000, the first 10.000 calculated numbers with nineteen decimals and the following with fourteen with five columns of differences; other, 2.000.000 and some thousand of trigonometrical logarithms of lines, more exactly 10.000 sines of natural numbers calculated with 25 decimals with seven or eight columns of differences; 2.000.000 of logarithms, as well sine as tangents, calculated with fourteen decimals with four columns of differences; and finally 10.000 logarithms relating to the reports/ratios of the sines and tangents to the arcs, to facilitate the interpolation in calculations relative to the small angles, fourteen decimals like the precedents and with three columns of differences.

What there is of singular in the execution of this enormous work, it is that it was concluded in two years. For the realization of the tables, Prony had taken as a starting point a passage of Recherche on the nature and the causes of the richness of the nations of Adam Smith, and implemented a team where the division of the labor was organized out of calculators, inspectors, and at their head a coordinator.

These tables overrode all those which existed then, printed or handwritten, without excluding of them even those of the Observatory of Vienna. However, the revolutionary government, then the Directoire, which had passed a market with the house Firmin Didot for the impression of these tables, could not finance this work. Prony was restricted to publish one Note on the large tables logarithmic curves and trigonometrical adapted to the new metric system and decimal (Paris, 1824, in-4°).

Creation of the Polytechnic school

Prony sees approaching the end of its table when, in 1794, Perronet dies. Supplanted by Jacques-Elie Lamblardie with the direction of the School of the Highways Departments, it implies at the sides of Monge in creation the Polytechnic school. Though Joseph-Louis Lagrange and Prony is right from the start in charge joint of the teaching of the mechanical in this new establishment, it is Prony which generally occupies the pulpit. The courses that Prony makes will become for him the occasion of a series of works to which professional training at the XIXe century (central schools, arts and trades) will borrow much. About same time, the Academy of Science is reconstituted like part of the Institute; Prony is named by it member right from the start, and successively he becomes secretary about it, then president. He is also with Cuvier and Vicq d' Azyr one of the first founders of the philomathic Société of Paris.

Under the Consulate and the Empire

Scientific and technical work

Its name was surrounded by a great scientific glare when, in 1797, Bonaparte returned from the countryside of Italy, and rained oneself to appear with the Institut, and especially with the class of sciences. He sought Prony; and Madam de Prony, that her birth and education had always held in relation to the nobility, was accepted with friendship by Joséphine de Beauharnais. With died of Chézy, Prony was named principal of the Highways Departments. It is in this quality that, in August 1808, it went in company of Sganzin to visit the department of the the Vendée, for the purpose of studying the measures to be taken to drain the Marais poitevin S, to channel the Sèvre, and to improve the ports. In 1798, it succeeds Lamblardie with the direction of the School of the Highways Departments and it remains it until its death is during 41 years.

Before and after this excursion in the Vendée, Napoleon had responsible it for similar missions abroad, in particular in Italy, where Prony had to make three voyages: the first in 1805, to inspect the course of the Po and to carry out several work with the port of Genoa and the gulf of Spezzia; the second in 1806, for the improvement of the ports of Ancône, Venice and Pola; the third in 1810 and 1811, for the cleansing of the area occupied by the Marsh Pontins.

Arrest in Venice

The first of these forwardings is marked by the arrest of Prony on the Austrian territory. Accompanied by an officer of the genious, it crosses Po, travels through the old Venetian provinces and to Venice even where, suspected of activities of information, it is stopped with his comparse by the Austrian police force. After a meticulous interrogation, the two French are shut down (July 10th). The attempt at intercession of the French general police chief of the commercial relations at Bissingen, chief of the police force of Venezia, shows a failure. Meanwhile, Bonaparte, furious, makes stop a advising aulic of Vienna which was in Paris, and it does not slacken it that with the advertisement of the release of Prony. Finally, it is the intervention of the French police chief near the general of Bellegarde, which allows the release of Prony.

The project of the Pontins Marshes

Prony, during its last voyage in Italy, continues its studies on the draining of the marshes pontins and collects a considerable mass of documents, as well on the history of the attempts made to drain the marshes as on topography and hydrography. Its project is worth to him a gold medal of the pope Leon XII in 1812, but the financial problems of the imperial government do not make it possible any more to consider the execution of these plans. To preserve the trace of the undertaken studies, Prony, to the fall of Napoleon, consigns in a special writing ( hydrographic and historical Description of the marshes Pontins ) the result of its observations and its research.

Under the Restoration

The events of 1814, as they remove the capacity with Bonaparte and bring back the Bourbons, do not afflict Prony deeply, and much less still its wife. The Restoration besides the fact officer of the Legion of honor (August 5th, 1814) and knight of the Order of Saint-Michel (1816). If it keeps the direction of the school of the Highways Departments, it must on the other hand yield its place of professor to the Polytechnic school, preserving only the role of permanent inspector of the candidates for this school.

Among various missions which it fulfills during the sixteen years of the government of the elder branch of the Bourbons, one must especially notice the inspection of 1827 in the Département of the Rhone, to warn by means of saving the region of raw river. It better however does not succeed than its predecessors to make of it the return impossible, or rather it sees there remedies only with the help of expenditures so large that the department, the government and the cities give up.

Little time after its return, Prony is created baron (June 25th, 1828). The government of July names it in 1835 Pair France. Though the sphere of activity of Prony in Luxembourg had to be extremely restricted, it is him which was, in 1837, the rapporteur of the charged commission of the examination of the relative bill to the rebuilding of seven bridges. At the beginning of 1839 its health gives serious concerns, though it takes share until the end with the deliberations of the council of the Highways Departments.

It remained lastly with the hotel of Carnavalet, where was then the royal School of the Highways Departments; it is there that it combined its last equations, and that it composed several articles of the Universal Biographe taken again later by Louis-Gabriel Michaud. He died on July 29th, 1839. Three speeches were made with its funerals (August 3rd) by François Arago, Fontaine and Tarbé de Vauxclair. Prony was since 1833 member of the Bureau of longitudes in the capacity as geometrician and commander of the Legion of honor.

Works

Gaspard de Prony also formed part of the majority of the large academies of Europe, and was interested in many scientific disciplines. It in particular published in 1832 a treaty on the musical intervals, perhaps influenced by his wife (see Prony). It also developed a mechanism for the Steam engine called brake of Prony and which was used during a test with Paris with the Large-Stone for a machine of the type Woolf installed by Humphrey Edwards and intended to provide water to the western part of the districts of left bank.

He wrote quantity of works, though of fort unequal importance:

Exposure of a method to build the given equations which refer to the conic sections, with the use of the Highways Departments , Paris, 1790, gr. in-4°, 2 vol.;
New trigonometrical method , Paris, 1823, in-4°. The method which Prony exposes here and which was clean for him (it had imagined in Italy in time when he dealt with the Pontins marshes) had a double goal, on the one hand to obtain a more satisfactory precision, other to guarantee influence of a poisoned atmosphere. This memory thus binds to its large Description hydrographic and historical of the marshes Pontins , where already it had presented an outline of its method, but here the exposure is developed.
Memory on the calculation of longitudes and the latitudes , Paris, 1806, in-4°;
Report/ratio on the experiments made with a French instrument and an English instrument, to determine the report/ratio of the meter and English foot, and to compare between them the original standards of measurements belonging to the National institute of France (the 15 nivôse year X, 1802), in-4°;
Analysis of the system of the world of Laplace , Paris, 1801. This summary is recommended by a happy provision and a great clearness. It is with the range of the society peoples who know a little geometry, or who at least have enough mathematical instinct to follow designs already a little above theeasy one, but not very complicated still however and clearly presented.
Mechanical philosophical, or analyzes various parts of the science of balance and movement , Paris, year VIII (1800), in-4°. Although this treaty is only one piece drawn with share from the Journal from the polytechnic school , we classify it here, as well because of its importance as of its dimension. The author however did not complete it; the whole work was to be composed of five parts and a synoptic table of all the parts of mechanics. Only the first three parts are included/understood in the publication of year VIII. It is recommended especially by a great clearness, by good synoptic tables, the method.
Lessons of analytical mechanics given to the polytechnic royal school , Paris, 1815,2 vol. (or two parts), in-4°. It is still an unfinished work. Two parts only, statics and dynamics, are treated there; it still misses the hydrostatic one and the hydrodynamics, that Prony had promised and to which even it was to join applications, which had given place to a fifth part.
Rationale of the course of mechanics of Mr. Prony , Paris, year IX (1801), in-4°. This recapitulation, less important undoubtedly than the works which precede, has this of invaluable which she embraces the unit and which she traces the whole table of science.
Summary of the laws on the movement of the solid bodies, the balance and the movement of the fluids, given to the polytechnic school in 1809 , Paris, 1809, in-4°.
Summarized theory of the fundamental formulas relating to the movement of water in the pipes and the channels , Paris, 1825, in-4°, 5 tables. This excellent piece has joined together all the results of the best experiments made in all Europe on this subject.
Report/ratio on the report of Ducros on the quantities of water which the ship canals require, Paris, year IX (1801), in-8°. 15°) physicomathematical Research on the theory of the running water , Paris, year XII (1804), in-4°. Although of size less bulky than some of the preceding publications, the physicomathematical Recherches is one of the beautiful titles of Prony. There are many research, experiments, solutions, formulas which are clean for him, and one can say without exaggeration which it contributed to enrich, to form the theory of running water.

Homages

Its name is registered on the Eiffel Tower.

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