Rateau, Auguste Camille Edmond (X 1881 ; 1863-1930)

Mining engineer and professor at the École des mines (School of Mines) de Saint-Étienne (1886), he studies fluids as driving forces, as well as the machines using these fluids: turbomachinery, for which he offers his "Treaty of turbomachinery" (1898-1900). Unable to carry out his research and professional career, he was granted unpaid leave in 1898, after having founded a consulting firm in 1897, which in 1903 became the Rateau Patent Exploitation Company. We owe him a theory of the nozzle profile which allows total expansion of the steam (1900). He developed a stepped wheel turbocharger, centrifugal pumps, fans for the mines; it supplies turbines for the navy. Professor at the Mines (School of Mines) de Paris (1901), he left teaching (1908) and joined the General Society of Mechanical Constructions (Société Générale de Constructions Mécaniques) (to produce his devices) and the Manufacturies and building sites of Brittany (Ateliers et Chantiers de Bretagne) for marine turbines. He resigned from the Corps des Mines (Mines Corps) in 1911. He produced an airplane turbocharger (1916) leading to the supercharging of combustion engines, the industrial gas turbine and the turbo-jet engine of jet planes. He studies the muzzle brakes of cannons to limit recoil. He entered the Academy of Sciences (1918). In 1930, when he died, his company, with three construction factories, employed 2,500 people. Attaching great importance to standardization, he chairs the International Standard Association