Aimé Argand

Aimé Argand, origin. François Pierre Ami Argand ( born July 5, 1750 in Geneva, † October 14, 1803 in London ) was a Swiss physicist, chemist, inventor and entrepreneur.

Life and work

He was the ninth of ten children of the watchmaker Jean -Louis (1705-1780) and Madeleine, born Gaudy. The Argand family was originally from the village of Bonne, at the foot of the mountain range Voirons, and had moved to Geneva at the end of the 16th century.

He studied in Geneva and was a student of the naturalist Horace - Bénédict de Saussure, a co-founder of meteorology. While he was in the 1770s in Paris, he published several scientific articles meteorology, specifically on the phenomenon of hail and its etiologies. In 1775 he studied in Paris, physics and chemistry at Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier Antoine François de Fourcroy and.

He took a teaching post in the chemistry and developed some ideas to improve the distillation of wine into brandy. Together with his brother he founded in 1780 near Montpellier, a large distillery, who worked for a method developed by him.

In 1783 he met Étienne Montgolfier and participated in Lyon in the experiments with the hot air balloon.

From 1780, he began with improvements in the oil lamp. From a plumber in Montpellier he was a lamp build to his specifications. He developed the eponymous Argand lamp with a round wick, which reached a higher firing temperature by greater oxygen supply and thus enabled a cleaner burning of the fuel. A flame over the rolled-back glass cylinder calmed the burning process and thus the light ejection. A rotating mechanism allowing to provide the wick higher or lower and thereby to increase the light yield or decrease.

For a steady flame, he improved the management of the air flow first through a plate made ​​about chimney, which he replaced in 1784 by the lamp glass. In the same year he was awarded the patent for this oil lamp. He founded a factory in London. His lamp was from the Parisian pharmacist Antoine- Arnoult Quinquet (1745-1803) and his partner Ambroise Bonaventure Long imitated. ( Quinquet had possibly already in 1756 used a glass cylinder. ) In 1787 he founded together with his pupil and nephew Isaac -Ami Bordier Marcet ( 1768-1835 ) a new factory in Versoix near Geneva, but by following the cancellation of the patents as a result of the revolution 1789 got into trouble. From 1800 the Argand lamps were victorious on lighthouses.

First, we used rapeseed oil, which was produced from rapeseed and was thus easily over a large area to produce. After the discovery of oil fields in Pennsylvania Petroleum was preferred as a cheaper and cleaner fuel the organic oil. Also many oil lamps, now found everywhere spread, burned after the Argand principle.

In 1789 he married Isaline Marcet, daughter of Isaac agronomists. His only son died in an accident at the factory.

In 1792 he invented together with Joseph Montgolfier the hydraulic ram, and improved machinery for spinning and carding of cotton.