Alphonse Beau de Rochas

Alphonse Eugène Beau, later Alphonse Beau de Rochas ( born April 9, 1815 in Digne; † 27 March 1893, in Vincennes ) was a French railway engineer and inventor.

Life

Beau de Rochas father Alexandre Beau was a tax and treasurer at the Caisse d' Epargne. The mother Thérèse Jacques de Rochas was born into a noble, influential and wealthy family of pharmacists in Digne. At age nine, Beau de Rochas was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Orléans, where he received a strict education. At the age of 16, he returned to Digne and trained as a surveyor.

After his education he worked - often simultaneously - to a wide variety of theoretical projects, dealt for example with the desalination of the Camargue, developed together with Philippe Breton an underwater telegraph or attempted to Corsica on a new process for the extraction of granite and porphyry. All these restless efforts were crowned with little success, especially as its sometimes highly inventive approaches limited only to the theory and he could not raise the possibilities or the patience practice appropriate developments. Another reason might have been be more difficult, maverick and quarrelsome character which made ​​it difficult for professional success and social recognition.

In 1848 he tried his hand in politics of the new republic, candidate in the provincial elections, engaged for a while devotedly for a self-developed liberal, heavily influenced by the social ideas of Frédéric Le Play program, withdrew his candidacy but for unknown reasons before the elections back.

In 1852 he left Digne and went to Paris, where he continued formed for railway engineer and pupil of Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was, with whom he worked on the technical improvement of steam engines. In parallel, he was at his own expense the first city guide of Paris Print - a brilliant business idea that failed in turn to a lack of marketing. In the same year he married Elisabeth Lemariée. The marriage remained childless.

1861 Beau de Rochas designed course and routes of the railway line from Grenoble to Nice, to be built in 1892, without it would have been financially involved. Also his design for a tunnel between France and England, as well as for electricity generators, which should provide Paris with electricity date from the year 1861. In 1888 he proposed the artificial irrigation of an oasis in Sudan and designed a trans-African railway route to the last detail.

At the end of his life in honor of Beau de Rochas came through his invention of the four-stroke engine. As early as 1862, he applied for a patent for this. He described motors for locomotives which have a combination of steam with gas engine. The gas in the machine should be " under high compression spontaneously ignite ", which could be achieved through four phases of machine work:

Thus, he theoretically recognized the principle of the four-stroke engine, however, Christian Reithmann already on October 26, 1860, a patent for a four -stroke engine. Nicolaus August Otto also had in 1862 with the development of a four-stroke engine and has received a patent on it, but this was later revoked because of the priority of the Reithmann 's patent.

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