Biography

 

After taking classes in drawing and mathematics in Châlons-sur-Marne, he was admitted to École des Ponts et Chaussées in April 1787.Ranked 10th on his arrival, he finished in first place and was given a teaching appointment.A national competition on “fire machines”, in which he won first prize, gave him the opportunity to show his engineering talent at the age of 25.In the competition, he suggested using a boiler with an internal burner and galleries for the flames to circulate through, the removal of the pendulum and the adoption of a new kind of condenser.His proposals included certain characteristics of future steam engines, but were not immediately implemented.In 1793, he joined his post as an ordinary engineer in the Ponts et Chaussées corps at Charente in Angoulême.Rather than monitoring the local work, he preferred to take multiple trips to Brachay and Paris to continue his scientific research.In 1796, he established new distillation rules based on studies on vapour.He proposed applying them in alcohol production, salt formation, oil purification and in separating the fixed and volatile parts of any substance.He became familiar with the distillation mechanism and the gas effects it causes.In this way, he was able to observe the lighting and heating qualities of the gas produced by wood carbonisation.On September 28, 1799, in Paris, he presented an invention that he patented under the name “Thermolampe”:His method was to distil wood in an enclosed vase inside a brick furnace.This enabled him to isolate a portable flammable gas to provide light and heating, pyroligneous acid used in the formation of metallic limes and condensable vapours. With the replacement of wood by oil, the industrial production of gas for lighting and its cohort of sub-products, coke, ammoniac and tars became possible.He publicised his apparatus through public experiments in Faubourg Saint-Germain, which had a considerable impact but received a bad press because of the fetid odour of the unpurified gas.In 1800, Lebon suggested to the government the construction of equipment for public heating and lighting, but despite the number of spectators and the support of well-known scientists (Prony, Gay-Lussac, D’Arcet, Fourcroy), the hoped-for sequels did not come, for lack of financial resources.He was granted land in Rouvray Forest to produce tar from wood carbonisation.From here, he delivered large quantities of tar to the Navy.The Russian princes, Galitzin and Dolgorowki, who visited his operation, proposed that he move his invention and processes to Russia, but Lebon refused out of patriotism.On December 1, 1804, an unexpected event stopped everything.Philippe Lebon died, probably from a severe case of gout, which he had been suffering for several days, and not, as the legend long had it, murdered in the shadow of the Champs-Élysées.Later, following on from the work of Philippe Lebon and improving the system, William Murdoch managed to provide light in a Manchester mill using oil gas in 1805. In 1816, the Winsor company arrived in Paris, and began providing gaslight via underground pipes, and it was in 1819 that Place du Carrousel finally became illuminated.

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