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1 Leschot, Georges Auguste
[br]b. 24 March 1800 Geneva, Switzerlandd. 4 February 1884 Geneva, Switzerland[br]Swiss clockmaker, inventor of diamond drilling.[br]By about 1843, Leschot, who was renowned for designing machines to produce parts of clocks on an industrialized scale, had gathered that the fine, deep lines he found on an Egyptian red porphyry plate must have been cut by diamonds. He thus resurrected a technology that had been largely forgotten over the centuries, when in 1862 his son, who was engaged in constructing a railway line in Italy, was confronted with the problems of tunnelling through hard rock. In Paris he developed a drilling machine consisting of a casing that rotated in a similar way to the American rope drilling method. The crown of the machine was mounted with eight black diamonds, and inside the casing a stream of water circulated continuously to flush out the mud.He took out his first patent in France in 1862, and followed it with further ones in many European countries and in America. He continued to concentrate on his watchmaker's profession and left the rights to his patents to his son. It was Leschot's ingenious idea of utilizing diamonds for drilling hard rock that was later applied in different mining processes. It influenced a series of further developments in many countries, including those of Alfred Brandt and Major Beaumont in England. In particular, the fact that the hollow casing produced a complete core was of importance for the increasing amount of petroleum prospecting in Pennsylvania after Edwin Laurentine Drake's find of 1859, where M.C.Bullock sunk the first deep well (200 m) in the world by diamond drilling in 1870. The efforts of Per Anton Crælius in Sweden made diamond drilling a success worldwide.[br]Further ReadingD.Colladon, 1884, "Notice sur les inventions mécaniques de M.G.Leschot, horloger", Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles 3, XI (1):297–313 (discusses the influences of Leschot's invention on other engineers in Europe).D.Hoffmann, 1962, "Die Erfindung der Diamantbohrmaschine vor 100 Jahren", Der Anschnitt 14(1):15–19 (contains detailed biographical outlines).WKBiographical history of technology > Leschot, Georges Auguste
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2 Horology
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Ctesibius of AlexandriaGrimthorpe, Edmund Beckett, BaronSu SongYi-XingZhang Sixun -
3 Mining and extraction technology
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Biographical history of technology > Mining and extraction technology
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4 Sommeiller, Germain
[br]b. 15 March 1815 St Jeoire, Haute-Savoie, Franced. 11 July 1874 St Jeoire, Haute-Savoie, France[br]French civil engineer, builder of the Mont Cénis tunnel in the Alps.[br]Having been employed in railway construction in Sardinia, Sommeiller was working as an engineer at the University of Turin when, in 1857, he was commissioned to take charge of the French part in the construction of the 13 km (8 mile) tunnel under Mont Cénis between Modane, France, and Bardonècchia, Italy. This was to be the first long-distance tunnel through rock in the Alps driven from two headings with no intervening shafts; it is a landmark in the history of technology thanks to the use of a number of pioneering techniques in its construction.As steam power was unsuitable because of the difficulties in transmitting power over long distances, Sommeiller developed ideas for the use of compressed-air machinery, first mooted by Daniel Colladon of Geneva in 1855; this also solved the problems of ventilation. He also decided to adapt the principle of his compressed-air ram to supply extra power to locomotives on steep gradients. In 1860 he took out a patent in France for a combined compressor-pump, and in 1861 his first percussion drill, mounted on a carriage, was introduced. Although it was of little use at first, Sommeiller improved his drill through trial and error, including the use of the diamond drill-crowns patented by Georges Auguste Leschot in 1862. The invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel contributed decisively to the speedy completion of the tunnel by the end of 1870, several years ahead of schedule.[br]Further ReadingA.Schwenger-Lerchenfeld, 1884, Die Überschienung der Alpen, Berlin; reprint 1983, Berlin: Moers, pp. 60–77 (explains how the use of compressed air for rock drilling in the Mont Cénis tunnel was a complex process of innovations to which several engineers contributed).W.Bersch, 1898, Mit Schlägel und Eisen, Vienna: reprint 1985 (with introd. by W.Kroker), Dusseldorf, pp. 242–4.WK
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