Joseph Farcot
Joseph Farcot (Paris 1824 - Saint-Ouen 1908) was an engineer specialist in the steam engines.
Wire of Marie-Joseph Farcot, it was called “ the man to a hundred and eighty fourteen Brevet S ”. March 13rd 1833, it deposited a first patent for a circular pump; in 1846, it built workshops in the district of the wearing of Saint-Ouen (avenue of the Captain-Glarner today); it obtains a big number of patents in very varied fields: steam engines, Regulating S, Pump S, Alternator S, Crane S, Driving S thermics, Servo-motor… Of 1854 with 1863, it deposited 41 patents; from 1864 to 1873,88 patents and, of 1884 to 1898,64 patents.
It is sometimes quoted like one of the founders of the Cybernétique, when this word is used with the direction stated by Plato for the piloting of a ship, but also because it into practice put the principle of Rétroaction thanks to the design of the Servomoteur Joseph Farcot in 1859. By improving the Centrifugal governor of James Watt, empirical servomechanism, it found the solution of a major problem: one used steam engines to advance powerful armoured vessels, but one was unable to use the driving force of the vapor to order their rudder of several tons (one always used Cabestan S driven by teams of sailors!). It had the idea to apply the action of the vapor to the piston of the rudder starting from information taken on the position of this one. It was about a Rétroaction: the reacting effect on the order. The Cuirassé S giants became handy using a simple wheel of order. Joseph Farcot became thus one of the first experimenters of the cybernetics, disciplines which awaited its theorists still a long time.