Eugène Belgrand

Marie François Eugène Belgrand ( born April 23 1810 in Ervy -le- Châtel, † April 8, 1878 in Paris) was a French civil engineer, known for its renewal of the Paris sewer system and the water supply of Paris.

Belgrand studied in 1829 at the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Immediately after his graduation in 1832, he recognized the occasion of a flood at a bridge he was building, the importance of geology for civil engineering and its hydrological knowledge, he used later in the construction of water supply from Avallon (from 1845) to as large advantage that he gained the attention of Georges- Eugène Haussmann. He took the water from 4 km approach, where he (then a record ) had to overcome an altitude difference of 88 m, and used as the Romans lime mortar in the water supply lines. His extensive hydrological studies in the Seine basin he summed together later in books and he is regarded in France as the founder of hydrology in the modern sense. He also dealt with the geology of the Paris Basin and turned on paleontological investigations.

In 1852 he was chief engineer for the Seine from Paris to Rouen. In 1855, he was of the house man who modernized, used the city of Paris 1852-1870 commissioned by Napoleon III to renew the water supply and sewage systems of Paris, to which he became director in 1867 appointed. His construction and its modernization of the Parisian sewer system has still stock and here he followed in the spacious facility Roman model ( the Cloaca Maxima in Rome). Until 1878 600 km were built. For the supply of fresh water, he built ( he published a book about it ) a system of aqueducts, which he had studied after Roman models. He manages the construction of the aqueduct of Dhuys ( aqueduc de la Dhuis ) that the water 131 km from Pargny la Dhuys to the reservoir Ménilmontant in Paris at only 20 m total gradient is derived. 1865, was completed after three years of construction. He also built the aqueduc de la Vanne with 77 sheets ( and up to 38 m), a part of another water supply over 100 km from the rivers Vanne, Loing and Lunain to the reservoir of Montsouris, he built also. Construction began in 1866, with completion in 1874. Offering measures he doubled the per capita in Paris available fresh water and quadrupled the number of houses with running water.

He is one of the 72 names on the Eiffel tower and a street in Paris is named after him.

In 1871 he became a member of the Académie des sciences.

Writings

• Les travaux souterraines de Paris, 5 volumes, Paris, 1872-1887 Dunod
• Les Aqueducs romaine, 1875
• Mémoire sur les études de la partie supérieure hydrologiques du bassin de la Seine, 1846
• La Seine, études hydrologiques, 1872
• La Seine. Le Bassin parisien aux âges antéhistoriques, 1869
• Étude sur le régime préliminaire des eaux dans le bassin de la Seine, 1873