Why is it called “Polytechnique”?

To understand why there are so many pieces of equipment from the past in the École Polytechnique's collection, we can refer to the original intent of the founders of the École Polytechnique. They found it unthinkable to establish a school without giving the students access to laboratories for practical physics and chemistry classes.

The teaching was therefore based on direct experience: for this purpose, a variety of scientific objects were needed. As a product of the French Revolution, the École Polytechnique naturally utilized national stores to set up their own initial collections: goods confiscated from prohibited religious and royal institutions like the Royal Academy of Sciences, and items belonging to noble émigrés. Later, the teachers persuaded major builders of scientific instruments in Paris to purchase or design new devices.

Experimental electromagnetic engine. The principle of this engine is to cause the rotation of a disk (here with pointed metal rods) placed in an electromagnetic field generated by an électromagnet.

This electrical device designed for medical usage is the fruit of the labor of Doctor Arsène d’Arsonval, who established the electrotherapy department at the Paris hospital La Salpêtrière. The effect of these currents is to produce broad vascular dilatation, thereby reducing blood pressure. The device came from the workshops of Ducretet, one of the biggest builders of scientific instruments at the time. Trained at the workshops of Gustave Froment, a former student of the École Polytechnique, he is also known for having made the first wireless telegraph communication in France, between the Eiffel Tower and the Pantheon.

The students photographed here are carrying out physics experiments, at the start of the 20th century.

The École Polytechnique's first modern research laboratory dates back to 1937. Today, there are 23 research centers covering the main fields of science. Twenty-two of the school's laboratories are run jointly with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). This photograph shows students of Physics Modal (Module Applied in Laboratory), which is a compulsory module for all students doing diversified studies.

Femtosecond lasers, which produce impulses of several dozen millionths of billionths of seconds, make it possible to reach considerable power crests, precisely because their energy is concentrated in a very brief time interval. This makes is very easy to enter into a nonlinear regime, where the interaction between matter and light allows us to convert the length of the radiation wave, in other words to change its color. This laser is used at the Laboratory of Optics and Biosciences.

The experiment room of the LULI2000 installation, and the "Milka" interaction room, which has laser beams focused inside it. The powerful laser installation LULI2000 and its associated experimentation equipment are used by numerous teams of scientists. Their studies take in areas such as laser inertial fusion, high density energy matter, laboratory astrophysics, internal geophysics, physics and materials processing, and in general the physics of plasmas created by lasers and their applications.

These instruments have been used for more than 200 years by students to pursue their dreams, and to help science continue advancing.