See also: Girard

Philippe Henri de Girard , born with Lourmarin (Vaucluse) the 1775 and died in Paris the August 26th 1845, is a French, inventive engineer-mechanic of the spinning machine the flax.

It is a studious, gifted child for the studies, but the Révolution obliges his/her parents to flee France and to give up all their goods. It is sixteen years old and must work to help its family without resources exiled abroad.

In 1810, moved by an imperial contest which offers 1 million francs to the inventor of a spinning machine, it is put at work and develops a spinning machine the flax. It deposits a patent in 1817, but the Empire was reversed and summons it is not versed. Its invention does not meet discounted success and it must yield its machine to the Britanniques. A few years later, it will return and make it possible the area inhabitant of Lille to become the first center of industrial spinning mill of France. But Philippe de Girard, ruined, left in Poland where it established prosperous spinning mills which will be at the origin of the creation of the town of Żyrardów (Girardoff).

He is buried in his native village. A school of the XVIIIe district and a street extending from Xe to the XVIIIe district of Paris, as well as a college of Avignon, bear its name.