Biography

 

Ranked first in the état-major (the military career route) on leaving the École polytechnique in 1836, he resigned to follow courses at École des Ponts et Chaussées as an external student.After a few months in construction workshops in England, where he had gone to complete his technical studies, he was put in charge of monitoring the manufacture of the locomotives ordered by the Paris Railway Company in Orléans from the Sharp workshops in Manchester.From 1839 to 1845, he was traction engineer and director of the workshops on the lines from Paris to Saint-Germain, Versailles and Saint-Cloud.Here, Ernest Gouin tried to apply atmospheric pressure to train propulsion, and brought back from England the first telegraphy devices.In 1846, Ernest Goüin founded the locomotive and wire drawing machines construction workshops in Batignolles and, three years later, he introduced into France the technique of riveted iron bridge construction, which at the time was only practised in England.From the Batignolles workshops merged numerous engineering works, such as the metal bridges of Asnières, of Culoz, of Mâcon and large bridges abroad, for example in Hungary (Pesth), in Italy on the River Po, in Russia, Australia, Algeria and Senegal.In Nantes, he also founded shipyards for the construction of wooden, iron, steam and sailing boats.  For almost 40 years, he was also involved in designing and operating numerous railway lines in the Pyrenees near Saint-Sébastien, the Apennines near Naples, the Carpathians in Romania, the Tyrolean Alps, the Bône-Guelma network in Algeria, the line from Dakar to Saint-Louis in Senegal and numerous local lines in France and Belgium.He was also Chairman of the Paris Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Paris Arbitration Council and of the Seine Chamber of Commerce, and Regent of the Bank of France from 1876 to 1885 to 1885. Elected a municipal councillor in Batignolles in 1855 and in the 17th arrondissement (after the annexation of the town of Batignolles in 1859), and from 1871 in the 16th arrondissement, he was also a general councillor in the Seine Department.He is one of the 72 scientists whose names are inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.After his death, his company would be managed from father to son, and from uncle to nephew.A street in the 17th arrondissement of Paris has borne his name since 1933.

 

 

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