Barometers Realm

Eugène Bourdon worked with Jecker from 1830 to 1832 and spent several months with Calla the elder before founding his own business in 1832. The following year, he was awarded a silver medal by the Société d’Encouragement for a model steam engine with a glass cylinder — the first in a series of educational machine models he developed. The success of these models enabled him, in 1835, to purchase an existing mechanical workshop in Faubourg-du-Temple, which he gradually expanded to 3,000 square meters of covered space. There, he diversified production, manufacturing machine tools, steam engines, and pumps, as well as smaller devices such as float indicators.

On June 17, 1849, he patented a manometer and a metallic tube barometer, which were presented at the 1849 exhibition and earned him a gold medal. The steam pressure manometer he patented on June 19, 1849, was very similar to one patented a few months earlier in Germany by Schinz. Following further recognition at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, Bourdon was awarded the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In the following years, he made several inventions, mainly related to steam engines, before handing over the management of his business to his eldest son, Édouard, in 1872. Édouard, like his brother Charles, who was also an engineer, was educated at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers.

In the last ten years of his life, Bourdon dedicated himself to research and to establishing a private collection of contemporary mechanics. Among the devices invented or improved by him during this period were various types of clocks, a series of self-recording meteorological instruments, pneumatic clocks, and a multiplying anemometer, which was installed at the Paris Observatory.

A founder of the Société Française des Physiciens in 1884, Bourdon engaged in numerous disputes over the priority of inventions with other inventors, notably Vidié, concerning the metallic barometer. The conflict began in 1851 when Vidié had several samples of barometers made by Bourdon confiscated, and it continued until 1861, when Bourdon was awarded a small sum in damages. Some of Bourdon’s patents were shared with Richard Frères.