{"id":1441,"date":"2025-02-11T15:36:16","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T15:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2025-10-23T12:16:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T11:16:49","slug":"macintosh-and-the-rope-pump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=1441","title":{"rendered":"Macintosh and the rope pump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have written before<\/a> about Macintosh’s curious efforts in 1782 to facilitate an entr\u00e9e into the scientific establishment in London by submitting to the Royal Society his plans for an improved rope pump\u2014an ingenious device for raising water using ropes and pulleys alone. In his covering letter to Joseph Banks, Macintosh mentioned that he had been introduced to the pump the previous winter in Paris by its original inventor, a man living “in low circumstances”. Macintosh did not name the man, but claimed to have had his blessing to showcase the design (subsequently “improved”) to scientific circles in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little digging today has revealed the name of the original inventor: Charles-Vincent Vera, a postal employee living on the rue Pl\u00e2tri\u00e8re (later the rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, where, coincidentally, the auction of Mirabeau\u2019s library<\/a> took place). Contemporary accounts suggest that Vera’s invention, elegant in its simplicity and apparently inspired by observing how much water a rope dipped into a well would bring back with it to the surface, created something of a sensation when it was exhibited in 1781. Vera was commended by the Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences, and his invention was subject to considerable discussion in the press, being covered in the Gazette d’Agriculture<\/a><\/em> (5 January 1782), the Mercure<\/a><\/em> (26 January 1782), and in multiple issues of the Journal de Paris<\/em>, among other places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
A contemporary illustration of Vera’s rope pump. From Observations sur la Physique<\/a><\/em> (July, 1782). \u00a9<\/strong> Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Vera’s invention was very quickly subject to multiple experiments<\/a>, adaptations<\/a>, and proposed improvements<\/a> by a range of entrepreneurial or scientifically minded individuals, such as Antoine Deparcieux, professor physics at the College de Navarre, who published a long dissertation<\/em><\/a> on the subject in 1782. Macintosh was, in that sense, just one of many who sought to capitalise on Vera’s invention in the years immediately following is discovery. Knowing who the mysterious inventor was is important, however, when it comes to reconstructing Macintosh’s activities in Paris in 1781 when, it seems, he was pivoting between settling Thomas Lewin’s annuity on Catherine Grand and being transfixed by Vera’s rope pump on the rue Pl\u00e2tri\u00e8re.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vera, for his part, was eventually rewarded for his invention. In May 1795, the Revolutionary National Convention, resolved that<\/a> the then-sixty-year-old Vera be awarded a pension of 400 livres per year. He would have drawn that pension for more than a dozen years before his death<\/a>, on the rue Saint-S\u00e9bastien, in 1808.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have written before about Macintosh’s curious efforts in 1782 to facilitate an entr\u00e9e into the scientific establishment in London by submitting to the Royal Society his plans for an improved rope pump\u2014an ingenious device for raising water using ropes and pulleys alone. In his covering letter to Joseph Banks, Macintosh mentioned that he had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}