Guillaume Amontons

Guillaume Amontons (August 31st 1663 - October 11th 1705), physicist and academician French.

The praise written with died of Amontons in 1705 by Fontenelle in the Histoires of the Academy of Science is the only biographical source which we know on this Academician. The article of Gillispie drawn from its monumental Dictionnary off Scientific Biography is only the recovery.

Wire of a lawyer originating in Normandy, it is born with Paris on August 31st, 1663. Its existence was opposed soon by a deafness contracted following a disease whose Fontenelle does not say anything more to us. After this test, the Amontons young person started to study the Machines, interest which will not leave it any more. It is by working on the Perpetual motion that it forged its first reflections, and noted that the Mécanique was to be carried by principles which, if it knew them, would avoid to him many sorrows. This is why it was put at the Géométrie, against the opinion of its family, which apparently did not see an good eye an occupation considered to be as useless as not very remunerative…

He then learned the Dessin, the land surveying, the Architecture and knew, it is important for our matter, a beginning of career of Engineer (he “was employed in several public Works”), but, and the formulation of the praise is revealing: “… it was not a long time without rising higher, & it united in this Mechanique which produces our Arts, & is occupied only of our needs, the knowledge of sublime Mechanique, which laid out the Universe. ” Difficult not to see in this formula of Fontenelle a very marked hierarchy already, at least intellectual if it is not social, between on the one hand the Vulgar Mécanicien whose concern is the development of the machines of the daily life, and on the other hand the Mécanicien of the Universe , that which tries to highlight the operation of the wheels of the Skies. However, of the nature of the formation of Amontons, one knows nothing. Undoubtedly can one calculate without much risk which it was initiated with the laws of the Cartesian mechanical of his time.

But in spite of this acquired knowledge, the preferred field of our man remains the machines and the instruments, field henceforth lit by theories, and either only by the know-how of the craftsmen. In 1687, to 24 years very right it presented to the Academy new a Hygromètre which accepted a very favorable reception. Fontenelle does not cease renting a comrade apparently extremely appreciated for his simplicity, its “so naive uprightness”, its frankness, and described a man modest, unable to put forward himself differently than by its achievements, incompetent to even make fortune so much its frankness is large. But behind its airs of ingenuous, Amontons does not remain about it less one talented experimenter with the rich and many ideas which enable him to come to end from all the difficulties. The perpetual secretary does not hesitate to compare it with Mariotte, even if Amontons remained pupil of the academy all his life (Jean Febvre raises), of his entry in 1699 with his death on October 11th, 1705. Died which intervened at the 42 years age, following a “ignition of entrails”, although our man had been up to now in perfect health. To show us genius of Amontons, Fontenelle us quotes experiment which would have be carried out twice, and which consisted in transmitting a message between two points by the means of optical signals emitted by a station, and intercepted by the following station thanks to a Longue-vue, which itself transmitted it to the following station, up to the point of arrival. Each letter of the alphabet had its signal whose significance was known only extreme stations. This clever invention is however reported only in the registers of the Academy, and it is by no means obvious but Amontons, even if one can grant the idea to him, actually carried out the operation.

But our author did not continue any less in his way, and it is into 1695 that only appeared its and single treating book of Clepsydre S, Baromètre S and Hygromètre S, devoted to the use of these instruments, and in particular the first, with the Navigation. One thus sees that all his thought is entirely related to the pragmatic one, on the concrete realization of devices more powerful and more effective than the precedents, left, so to speak, randomly of the craft industry. Amontons brings there its theoretical knowledge which enables him to direct its research in a direction given from the beginning, a constructive a priori which releases it from the gropings. Continuing on its impetus, hardly allowed to the Academy, in 1699, it presents before the assembly, tells us Fontenelle, a theory on the Frottement S. But seven months earlier, Guillaume Amontons had presented in front of the Academy a project of " mill with feu" , driven by the force of the air dilated by heat, and allowing conveniently to replace 140 men or 37 horses. Amontons does not hesitate in this memory to make an economic calculation to convince its pars of the profitability of such an invention. Obviously, the mill with fire which it presented did not mark the spirits, whereas the way in which it considers the things is without precedent. In spite of a weak radiation, Bélidor however, in 1737, will quote it in these terms:

“One finds in the Memories of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the year 1699, which Amontons wrote on this subject: it proposes there an extremely clever wheel of Mill, which it shows capacity being driven by the action of the fire, based on a great number of experiments, & on reasoning which does not leave any doubt of the success of this wheel, that it names Moulin with fire. ”

of Yannick Fonteneau, Antecedents of the concept of work mechanical at the beginning of the XVIIIe century (1699 -1738): Calculation of the effect of the machines - Memory of Master II HPDS, Lyon 1,2005

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