Mécanique

Fixed-tube Archimedes' screw

Legend has it that the Greek physicist and mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse introduced the archimedes screw to Egypt so that people along the Nile could raise water more easily.

Model of a worm gear

A gear transmits movement and can also change its direction (angular and bevel gears). When two gearwheels do not have the same number of teeth, the rotation speed is reduced. Some gears can transform rotary movement into rectilinear movement (rack and pinion).

Known since ancient times, the first gears were wooden, bulky, and their teeth laboured under the strain. With the birth of mechanical clockmaking in the Middle Ages, the transmission of movement had to be more regular. Gear wheels were now metallic, but their components were worn by their torque and noisy abrasion.

Scientists in the late 16th century, including Leonardo da Vinci, studied the geometry of gears and their teeth to reduce friction. Well aware of the crucial role of gear mechanisms in industrial development, teachers at the Conservatoire, including Charles Dupin, began constructing teaching models in the late 1820s. Charged with teaching descriptive geometry, Théodore Olivier designed some thirty wooden models in the 1840s, and had them made by one of the Conservatoire’s most skilful craftsmen.

Kinematic curve models

These gear models served to teach the principles of kinematics, or the science of movement. Germany's J. Schröder built them for the Darmstadt Polytechnisches Arbeits Institut to demonstrate the steady transmission of a movement with variable speed. Schröder, known for the quality of his models, won awards at the 1844 and 1854 national exhibitions in Berlin.

At the 1862 Universal Exhibition in London, the Conservatoire des arts et métiers commissioned him to make several curve models shaped like hearts, Maltese crosses and four-pointed stars to illustrate the laws of mechanics.

Hanger bracket with bearing

In workshops and factories, motive force (produced by a waterwheel or steam engine, for example) was transmitted to machines via a drive shaft, on which were usually fixed wheels driving machines with belts.

The end of a drive shaft was held in the ‘bearing seat’, often cast iron and solidly fixed to the floor, inside which bearings enabled the shaft to turn freely without play.

The cap maintains the bearings at the right pressure against the shaft. The ‘chair’ is the beam with which the bearing seat is fixed to a wall or ceiling. This hanger bracket was made by the Piat company, founded in Paris in 1831 and renowned for the quality of the transmission machinery in which it specialised.

The particularity of this bracket is that it can be fixed in any direction.

Joint for the transmission of movement

Conical or bevel gears can be used to transmit movement between two drive shafts positioned at right angles. But conical gears are often complex and do not always satisfactorily maintain the same speed between the driving and driven shafts. Working on this question, the engineer Melville Clemens successfully presented a new device for transmitting movement at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, mounted for the occasion on a 100-horsepower machine. An article in the Revue maritime, echoing the one published in the Scientific American, emphasized the new joint’s silent functioning, robustness and reliability. This full-scale reproduction of the Clemens joint by Jules Digeon was acquired by the Conservatoire two years later, in 1878.

Bail bearing

Movement and its transmission cause friction, which both heats and wears a machine’s components. Replacing sliding motion with rolling motion is one of the solutions to this, in the same way that tree trunks were used to move heavy stones during the construction of the pyramids.

In the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci drew the principle of the ball bearing. The first patent was registered in 1794, but not until the development of the bicycle and its use in the wheel and peddle axles to reduce friction and breakage risks did the ball bearing show its true worth. Soon used in industry, it was improved by the Swedish engineer Sven Wingquist, one of the founders of the ball and roller bearing makers SKF. In 1922 an article in La Nature emphasized the ball bearing’s advantages: its considerable power economies, reduction of friction, increase in rotation speed, enhanced security, almost unnecessary greasing and very low component wear. For bearings demanding more rigidity, roller bearings are used instead of ball bearings.

The bearings on display in the museum were designed for the axles of railway carriages. They were donated by SKF in 1922 at the request of Édouard Sauvage, professor of the Conservatoire’s industrial applied mechanics chair.

Roller bearings

Movement and its transmission cause friction, which both heats and wears a machine’s components. Replacing sliding motion with rolling motion is one of the solutions to this, in the same way that tree trunks were used to move heavy stones during the construction of the pyramids. In the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci drew the principle of the ball bearing. The first patent was registered in 1794, but not until the development of the bicycle and its use in the wheel and peddle axles to reduce friction and breakage risks did the ball bearing show its true worth. Soon used in industry, it was improved by the Swedish engineer Sven Wingquist, one of the founders of the ball and roller bearing makers SKF. In 1922 an article in La Nature emphasized the ball bearing’s advantages: its considerable power economies, reduction of friction, increase in rotation speed, enhanced security, almost unnecessary greasing and very low component wear. For bearings demanding more rigidity, roller bearings are used instead of ball bearings. The bearings on display in the museum were designed for the axles of railway carriages. They were donated by SKF in 1922 at the request of Édouard Sauvage, professor of the Conservatoire’s industrial applied mechanics chair.

Bark mill with pestles

This model, already in the museum’s collection at the beginning of the 19th century, perfectly illustrates the use of a natural energy source and the transmission of movement via a drive shaft powered by a waterwheel. From the 12th century, bark mills were used to grind oak bark into the powder, the tan (or tanbark), used for dyeing skins in tanneries. With this, skins could be transformed into rot-proof leather. The waterwheel’s drive shaft has cams, which in turn raise each of the six pestles, which fall under their own weight to break the bark.

Silk throwing machine

Silk throwing is a necessary step prior to weaving the fabric. In order to do that, several strands had to be smoothly twisted together, first to the right, then to the left, to produce organzine. In the mid-18th century, Piedmontese mills were still used for this operation.

When Jacques Vaucanson studied ways of perfecting French silk production, he took a special interest in silk throwing mills, which he improved by introducing a chain with metal links. Now strands of silk could be twisted in a continuous and regular manner.

The machine in the museum, which came from Vaucanson's workshop, is a rare, precious example of the engineer's efforts to improve the regulation of a device driven by a continuous movement.

Sewing machine

After moving to Saint-Étienne in 1825, despite having no training in mechanics, Thimonnier worked relentlessly on the construction of a sewing machine, unaware of the patents already filed for similar machines in England and the United States. His first machine, completed late in 1828, chain-stitched with a hook, like embroiderers. Supported by a tutor at the École des Mines in Saint-Étienne, he devised his machine and registered a patent in 1830.

Thimonnier presented his invention with the aid of a working scale model, which may be the one on display in the Musée des Arts et Métiers. He was appointed head of the mechanical construction workshop in Paris, the first in the world, but had to face an adverse social environment: a few months after the July Revolution, workers hostile to the mechanisation of work ransacked the workshop. This was the first in a long series of disappointments for Thimonnier who, despite several patents, never managed to earn a living from his invention.

The 66K sewing machine

Sewing machines ushered the machine age into the home. The first were intended for garment workshops, but that changed in the mid-19th century when American Isaac Merritt Singer introduced the double-thread bobbin shuttle and a needle that moved up and down before starting the mass production of sewing machines in 1851.

Interchangeable parts, the possibility of selling the machines back to the company, the option of buying them on an instalment plan and aggressive advertising drove down production costs and helped Singer win markets in the United States and Europe. The 66K was designed ca. 1900. Despite its high price, the model was considerably successful : it was fast, sturdy and easy to use. Singer manufactured several variations, including this one with Egyptian lotus motifs.

Manual vacuum cleaner

Household appliances. Since the beginning of the 20th century, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, coffee grinders and toasters have entered our homes en masse.

Some of these objects have become design icons, but they are also examples of the progress in mechanics and manufacturing processes. Their mass-production was possible only with the miniaturisation of components, their regularity and reliability, as well as the massive expansion of electricity networks after the Second World War.

Standardisation of mechanical components and the domestic use of electricity were the keys to the development of household appliances, highlighted at the annual shows at the Grand Palais then at La Défense from 1923 to 1983.

Univ-AP coffee grinder

Since the beginning of the 20th century, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, coffee grinders and toasters have entered our homes en masse. Some of these objects have become design icons, but they are also examples of the progress in mechanics and manufacturing processes. Their mass-production was possible only with the miniaturisation of components, their regularity and reliability, as well as the massive expansion of electricity networks after the Second World War. Standardisation of mechanical components and the domestic use of electricity were the keys to the development of household appliances, highlighted at the annual shows at the Grand Palais then at La Défense from 1923 to 1983.

Toaster no.70

Since the beginning of the 20th century, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, coffee grinders and toasters have entered our homes en masse. Some of these objects have become design icons, but they are also examples of the progress in mechanics and manufacturing processes. Their mass-production was possible only with the miniaturisation of components, their regularity and reliability, as well as the massive expansion of electricity networks after the Second World War. Standardisation of mechanical components and the domestic use of electricity were the keys to the development of household appliances, highlighted at the annual shows at the Grand Palais then at La Défense from 1923 to 1983.

Electric toaster

Household appliances. Since the beginning of the 20th century, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, coffee grinders and toasters have entered our homes en masse. Some of these objects have become design icons, but they are also examples of the progress in mechanics and manufacturing processes. Their mass-production was possible only with the miniaturisation of components, their regularity and reliability, as well as the massive expansion of electricity networks after the Second World War. Standardisation of mechanical components and the domestic use of electricity were the keys to the development of household appliances, highlighted at the annual shows at the Grand Palais then at La Défense from 1923 to 1983.

Watchmaker's vice

This small vice donated to the Conservatory in 1886 stands out due to its outstanding craftsmanship. It was used in a master watchmaker's workshop to delicately hold the parts in place with two fastening screws (horizontal and vertical), allowing the craftsman to perform painstakingly accurate work.

An inscription, now partly effaced, suggests it was made by Leadbeater & Scott in Sheffield, England, a city famous for its steel industry. The sides are engraved with elegant scrolls typical of a "French" style found in many quality mid-18th-century tools. The donor who gave the museum this vice indicated that it may have belonged to the famous Jura watchmaker Antide Janvier. The quality of the craftsmanship and materials seem to bear out that claim.

Machine to cut files

Machine tools were rare in 1750. Grooving a file, cutting a gear tooth, rounding and polishing were essentially manual gestures. The maker of this machine benefited from experiments by 18th-century master watchmakers.

In their search for precision, they designed tools capable of accurately making watch parts. A few turns of a crank was all it took to evenly groove the metal's surface by means of a cam that controlled the hammer striking the chisel. The grooves' depth varied depending on the type of file desired. The tension of the flat spring above the hammer determined the movement's intensity, and therefore the depth of the imprint the chisel left on the hot metal.

This mechanical marvel foreshadowed the industrial machine age, when manual gestures were mechanised. But the dainty elegance of its scrolls and the perfection of its steel skeleton bear witness to a time when mechanics was an art.

Wheel splitting' machine

Behind its curious appellation is a machine that was designed to cut the teeth of clock wheels. The quest for increasingly accurate time measurement required components cut increasingly precisely. This machine has a disc engraved with series of concentric points, a file and an alidade to maintain the wheel on which the craftsman is working. The overall design was devised by the clockmaker Taillemard and perfected by his pupil Hulot, clockmaker to the king.

This machine was admired in its time, praised by the great clockmaker Ferdinand Berthoud, honoured by the Académie des Sciences and still referred to in the mid-19th century.

Complete workshop for making carriage wheels

This remarkable ensemble of eleven machines, three sawmills and a kiln depicts the workshop created in Rue du Chemin-Vert by five Parisian coachbuilders, including Eugène Philippe, in 1829.

From 1832 to 1839, Philippe made 1:5 scale models of these machines for the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, then in 1840 combined them in a single working model. Like the machines in the actual workshop, they were admired for the quality of their craftsmanship and their regular working.

Philippe was awarded a gold medal at the Exhibition of Products of French Industry in 1834. The use of machines, the concentration of production in huge workshops, the division of work and the distribution of power using drive belts were all features of the mechanisation of industrial sectors such as the construction of horse-drawn carriages from the July Monarchy onwards.

Atelier pour le travail mécanique du bois

This painting, which was displayed at the 1865 Salon (an art exhibition distinguished by the Academy of Fine Arts), shows the huge workshops of Jean-Louis Perin, future partner of the automobile-maker René Panhard, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine quarter. Beneath an immense skylight, employees use saws (right) or mortising machines (left) to work on wooden parts. Twenty years after Eugène Philippe's model of a car-wheel workshop, the use of machines had become widespread in increasingly big factories.

Pole lathe

Three thousand years ago, the Egyptians devised the principle of the lathe: a cutting tool is applied to a rotating tree trunk to gouge or smooth it. The chisel’s movement has to be as regular as possible.

For centuries, an assistant was required to maintain the cylinder continuously in rotation. In the 16th century the pole or bow lathe did away with the need for an apprentice’s aid. A cord is wound round the piece of wood and attached at the top to a flexible pole and at the bottom to a treadle. The turner activates the mechanism, the cord tightens, the bow bends and acts on the cord in the other direction. The piece turns, but in one direction then the other.

This improvement was not ideal because this inverted motion constantly hampered the turner’s work. Until the 18th century, carving a regular screw thread or a perfect cylinder were feats of craftsmanship.

Metal-turning lathe

To give silk a moiré effect, the fabric is passed between two copper cylinders that crush its grain to produce shimmering reflections. The principle is simple but how to perfectly turn the cylinders? For centuries, wooden-framed lathes had shuddered under the weight of heavy pieces being turned. The diameters of the mangles varied with the turner’s skill and strength.

Vaucanson invented a revolutionary and precursory lathe. Intent on automating every human gesture, this insatiable engineer mounted the cutting tool on a carriage whose constant displacement is powered by a worm drive activated by hand. The cylinder’s continuous rotation is also manually controlled. Vaucanson also devised prismatic guides to remove the metal shavings, and the lathe’s stability and rigidity is maintained by its entirely metallic frame.

Vaucanson defined the principles of the lathe, one of the fundamental machines of industrial mechanics.

Guilloché-engraving lathe

The luxurious mahogany bench, imposing fluted columns and golden gleam of the brass recall the royal destination of this lathe, formerly in the mechanics cabinet of Pierre Élisabeth de Fontanieu, Controller General of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne during Louis XVI’s reign.

This lathe allows its operator to chase the surface of a watch case, a tobacco or jewel box with an infinite variety of concentric rosettes. Controlled by a mysterious mechanical ‘score’, the metal spins, oscillates and is engraved with intricate arabesques. The principle of this lathe is its four pairs of cams with different profiles, each determining a particular movement of the drum on which it is mounted. The design engraved depends on the cam selected. The drum’s rotation is powered by the treadle, while this rotation is hindered by the very form of the rosette. Mounted on a spring, the axis performs an oscillating, back and forth, up and down movement, which is reproduced on the piece to be chased, but the tool remains static.

Screw-cutting lathe

Making a screw with a regular thread is a mechanical challenge. Until the 18th century, the turner manually gouged out a helical groove by gradually exerting pressure on the chisel. François Senot, preoccupied by the quality of the thread, improved solutions devised by Vaucanson and master clockmakers.

The cutting tool carriage is mounted on a worm drive, the perfection of whose thread ensures the tool’s regular advance and constant pressure. A gear train with interchangeable gears synchronises the rotation of the piece to be cut and the worm drive. The thread pitch can easily be modified by changing the gear ratios. All kinds of screw threads could thus be perfectly executed. The advent of large metal lathes

in the 19th century enabled the precise turning of the large metallic components essential for industrial machine tools.

Machine for threading spindles

The clockmaker’s craft is dependent on perfectly adapted precision tools. In their quest for perfection, clockmakers made their own compasses, files and chisels to cut and thread increasingly minute components. In the 17th and 18th centuries they created machines that executed the most painstaking and repetitive operations of their trade. Their innovations gave extraordinary impetus to the history of mechanics.

Thiout, inspired by his peers, constructed lathes for cutting very small screws. He added an adjustable articulated frame that guided the chisel’s action along the spindle, a threaded piece with a subtly tapered form. The talent of these men and the technical solutions they devised in their quest for precision foreshadowed the most sophisticated machine tools of the Industrial Revolution.

Linear guidance system

A direct descendant of the lathe and incorporating mechanical advances such as ball bearings, the linear guidance system ensures the perfectly regular displacement of an object along a rectilinear trajectory. The cogged belt drives the carriage mounted with the piece or object to be displaced at a speed of 3 metres per second. The anodized aluminium guide rail and carriage and its precision displacement is ensured by the lubricated-for-life ball bearings. Linear guidance systems are now widely used in industry for threading, shaping and extrusion, but also in the medical field for magnetic resonance imaging.

Lathed standing part decorated with drops and other ornaments

These enigmatic concentric spheres and delicate arabesques attest to a dying art, ornamental turning, born in the splendour of the Renaissance. Each piece is crafted from a single block of ebony, boxwood or ivory. Fluting and braiding entwine whimsical architecture; basins are locked forever in their openwork ovals. Barreau designed incredibly complex forms and created the tools and turns in the air to exercise his art. This poetic engineering remains a mystery the secrets of which its creator never revealed.

Le Chäteau de Saint-Ouen

High society’s keen interest in mechanical curiosities prompted clockmakers and painters to create ‘moving pictures’ showing figures and animals in bucolic landscapes in the style of the period. In the foreground, boatmen, fishermen and washerwomen are going about their business. In the background, the Château de Saint-Ouen and its park, residence of Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, from 1759 to 1764. Between the two planes, cows, sheep and horses make farmyard sounds, produced by a small bellows powered by the mechanism behind the picture, bearing the marquise’s coat-of-arms.

Sold for 200 livres after Madame de Pompadour’s death, this picture became the property of Princess Kinski before revolutionaries confiscated it in 1794. It was probably in the collection of the former Académie des Sciences before it was allocated to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in 1807.

Serinette with singing bird

In the 16th century canaries were very popular in castles, often being given singing lessons to perfect their song. Their masters patiently taught them the art of the trill and the roulade using a woodwind instrument called a flageolet, similar to a recorder. They were dispensed of this task the following century when clockmakers began making mechanical serinettes. By merely winding a key, deceptively joyous birdsong emanated from the box concealing bellows, whistle, cam and piston.

These increasingly small musical mechanisms were soon adorned with minute birds, whose skeletons and steel hearts were extraordinarily lifelike. They flapped their wings, snapped their beaks and danced until, with a final burst of song, their ephemeral illusion disappeared into its mysterious case. Soon tobacco boxes, watches and cane pommels concealed these singing birds that could so gracefully fill embarrassing silences in society conversations.

Clock with flutes and chimes

The first mechanical music dates from around the 10th century. Bells and soon chimes marked the passage of time in the Middle Ages.

Every event had its own melody, such as the mournful tocsin. A cylinder with sprockets activated levers that struck the bells at the right moment. These ingenious sprocketed cylinders were used to produce other movements and sounds, opening and closing organ valves and vibrating chords and blades.

This was the era of clocks with sets of bells, flutes and organ pipes. In the 18th century, clockmakers proud of their mechanical inventions showed off their mastery of their art in musical masterpieces such as these skeleton clocks. Their cylinders often had eight melodies side by side, composed by famous musicians such as Bach, Mozart and Händel.

La Joueuse de tympanon

This android depicts a young woman in a "little Dauphine" gown playing a tympanum. Pierre Kintzing made the outstanding mechanism, which moves the arms, head and bust of the figure, who suddenly comes to life playing an invisible score.

The automaton, which really strikes the strings with tiny hammers, plays eight melodies, including the aria of the shepherdess from Armide by Gluck, one of Marie-Antoinette's favourite composers. It was probably built in 1784 and delivered to the Court of France the following year.

In a letter dated 4 March 1785, Joseph Marie François de Lassone, the queen's physician, wrote that she "desired that this automaton figure be examined by some personages from the Academy of Sciences; and that if they judged it worthy of being placed in this Company's cabinet of machines, Her Majesty would be disposed to make a present of it to the Academy." She did, and the institution kept the Tympanum Player until giving it to the Conservatory, where it was restored by illusionist Robert Houdini, in 1864.

L'Homme-Serpent (The Snake Man)

In the late 19th century, toy, clock and musical box makers combined their skills to produce strange and unusual automatons made of card, wood, porcelain and metal that enchanted bourgeois drawing rooms and audiences outside department store windows.

Gustave Vichy was one of the longest-established makers of this generation. Beginning in 1866 his moon-faced clowns, magicians, musicians and acrobats had been hypnotising crowds with their gracefully mischievous gestures. The moon winks at us on the shirtfront of the Magicien, superbly unruffled in his mechanical perfection.

L’Homme Serpent (The Snake Man) has the same profound, fascinating gaze as his body rises with perfect, timeless grace. The swaying of his tunic’s beaded fringe prolongs the illusion of life long after the mechanism stops. Not until the 1930s would automatons, powered by electric motors, come alive for longer periods of time.