Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg
Summary
Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg (12 February 1709 – 14 December 1779) was a French physician, botanist, writer, translator and publisher known for translating Benjamin Franklin's work into French and for inventing a gentlemen's umbrella fitted with a lightning conductor. He designed a method of histographic visualizations which he called the Carte chronographique.
He first embarked on theological studies, but abandoned this to devote his life to science. He studied medicine in Paris and obtained a doctorate in 1748.
He was a keen follower of the work of Benjamin Franklin, and they maintained a regular friendly correspondence. He translated some of Franklin's early experimental work into French in 1762 and published it in Gazette d'Epidaure, his medical journal. He went on to publish his French translation of Franklin's Observations and Experiments in 1773. Barbeu-Dubourg's "umbrella-lightning rod", an umbrella fitted with a tall spike and trailing chain, was designed to give the same protection for gentlemen as was sought by ladies of the time who wore lightning conductors on their hats.
Barbeu-Dubourg was a member of the Royal Society of Medicine in Paris, the Medical Society of London and the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. He wrote numerous books and papers, including:
Chronographie, ou Description des tems, contenant toute la suite des souverains de l'univers et des principaux événements de chaque siècle... (Paris, 1753), one of the most ambitious of the chronographic charts produced during that period. The chart was 54 feet long, and mounted on an apparatus with scrolls and cranks to allow the reader to move freely through world history, a device which Barbeu-Dubourg called a "chronographic machine".
Gazette d'Épidaure, ou Recueil de nouvelles de médecine avec des réflexions pour simplifier la théorie et éclairer la pratique (Paris, 1762)
''Le Botaniste françois, comprenant toutes les plantes communes et usuelles...
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.