To Benjamin Franklin from Lenoir, 4 December 1783
From Lenoir
LS: American Philosophical Society
Paris le 4. Xbre. 1783.
Vous avés eu la bonté, Monsieur, de remettre à M. Cadet Deveaux la planche du Poele Cheminée, dont l’invention vous est due, et vous lui en avés fait esperer la Description.5 Je vous prie, Monsieur, de vouloir bien la lui procurer le plutôt possible, et je me chargerai de la rendre publique. On S’occupera aussitôt de la construction d’un Poele d’aprês vos principes: M. Cadet Se flatte que vous voudrés bien en diriger l’Execution.
J’ecris à Mrs. Perrier,6 pour qu’ils vous fassent parvenir du Charbon en roche. Je vous Serai três obligé de joindre à la description du Poele, celle de la grille que vous êtes dans l’intention de faire construire, pour l’Emploi de ce Combustible dans les Cheminées; détruire ainsi que vous le faites, Monsieur, la fumée du Charbon de terre et la faire tourner au profit de la chaleur:7 c’est un Service éssentiel que vous avés rendu à l’Economie et c’est une véritable obligation que vous aura le Gouvernement qui S’occupe dans ce moment ci, de la perfection des moyens Faits pour Substituer le charbon de terre au bois.8
J’ai l’honneur d’être avec un respectueux attachement, Monsieur, Vôtre três humble et três obeissant Serviteur./.
Lenoir
M. Franklin à Passy.
Endorsed: M. Le Noir
Franklin’s Sketches of a Fire-Grate
5. Cadet de Vaux had sent BF’s engraving of a vase-shaped coal stove to Vergennes on March 28. Vergennes replied on April 8: seeing the stove’s advantages, he urged Cadet to obtain from BF a description and suggested that BF might even supervise the construction of one. Cast iron was not available in France but was easily obtained in England: Vergennes to Cadet de Vaux, April 8, 1783 (AAE). For the engraving of the stove design see XX, facing p. 251. (We can now identify the engraver as Thomas Bonner: ODNB.) BF had sent it to Dubourg in 1773, to Morand in 1778, and to the Marquis Turgot in 1781: XXXV, 8–9, and the references cited there.
BF did not write a description until the summer of 1785: “Description of a New Stove for Burning of Pitcoal, and Consuming all its Smoke,” Smyth, Writings, IX, 443–62. In the spring of 1783, however, an article describing and illustrating the vase stove and specifying the dimensions of its parts was published in Bibliothèque physico-èconomique, instructive et amusante, année 1782 (Paris, 1783), pp. 137–49, under the title “Description & usage du Poêle de M. Franklin, pour brûler de la braise de Charbon de terre.” The unnamed author explained (p. 138) that BF himself was too busy to write a description; the article was based on BF’s engraving, personal conversations, and M. Morand’s book on coal. Bibliothèque physico-économique was announced in the May, 1783, issue of the Jour. des sçavans. It proved so popular that at least five more editions were issued in subsequent years.
6. Engineer Jacques-Constantin Périer and his younger brother Augustin-Charles. In addition to running the Paris waterworks at Chaillot, the elder Périer was a partner in the immense coke-iron works based on English technology that had been under construction at Le Creusot since 1782. This attempt by the French government to establish coal as the chief fuel for industry was unsuccessful, in part because of the shortage of coal itself: XXXIV, 175–6n; Jacques Payen, Capital et machine à vapeur au XVIIIe siècle: les frères Périer et l’introduction en France de la machine à vapeur de Watt (Paris, 1969), pp. 11–13, 41, 137–41; Christian Devillers and Bernard Huet, Le Creusot: naissance et développement … (Mâcon, France, 1981), pp. 18–19, 24; J. R. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot, Eng., and Brookfield, Vt., 1998), pp. 255–60.
7. BF described this coal-burning fire grate in “Description of a New Stove for Burning of Pitcoal …,” Smyth, Writings, IX, 460–1, and figs. 18 and 19 facing p. 444. It sat in a fireplace and, in addition to warming the room when in the vertical position, could also be turned horizontally to heat a tea kettle. BF’s preliminary sketches are reproduced here. For more information see the List of Illustrations.
8. During this period of exceptional cold and severe wood shortages, Lenoir, who had helped establish the Ecole gratuite de boulangerie (XXXII, 481–2), must also have been interested in the use of coal as an alternate fuel for baking. An article in the December, 1783, Jour. de physique attributed many advantages to coal-fired ovens as compared to conventional, woodfired ones: Jour. de physique, XXIII (1783), 433–47. Bakers at this time had to be given special privileges for buying wood so as not to disrupt the bread supply: Steven L. Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775 (Durham, N.C., and London, 1996), pp. 53–8, 76–7.