When I Was a Photographer by Félix Nadar

Author:Félix Nadar [Nadar, Felix]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: photography, film, biography
ISBN: 9780262029452
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2015-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

Doctor Van Monckhoven

Among the essential readings, more and more rare, which can elevate the soul and strengthen the heart, few pages are so eloquent in their brevity, at times a little pompous, following the fashion of the time, than the few pages of the report presented by Fourcroy at the National Convention, on behalf of the Committee on Public Health—On the arts that have already served in defense of the Republic and a recent discovery of citizen Armand Seguin.

Whatever opinion one might have—and it is not even necessary to be French—, it is impossible not to experience a profound emotion before this document of the admirable effort of a people determined not to perish or to retreat under the universe conspiring against them.

“Everything was missing at the same time, men, materials, and time.” It was necessary to create everything, “to overcome at every step the resistance of nature itself, the inertia of idleness and of carelessness, the obstacles of malevolence.”

In this report, a real patriotic breviary, and quickly, since he himself does not have time to waste or to make others waste, Fourcroy declares that arms factories, improvised immediately and throughout the territory, have already responded to the first needs: Paris alone has provided or refurbished one hundred and fifty thousand rifles.

In nine months, twelve million pounds of saltpeter had been delivered, while on average we used to obtain barely a million per year. From now on, twenty-four hours are enough to make thirty thousand pounds of saltpeter.

Our steel, until now dependent on other people, emancipates itself suddenly and becomes national. Our manufacturing facilities multiply everywhere: we create cannons in cast iron.

The telegraph—“this new revolutionary courier”—inspires and impels in the same breath the movements of our sparse armies, at the same time that it imposes on us the study and the methodical fabrication of the flint glass that we used to borrow from our enemy, who, each time, found the right composition for it only by chance.

The aerostation school of Meudon builds balloons and trains students for aerostatic companies; each army corps will have its aerostation park just as it has its artillery park. In the plains of Fleurus, in the ramparts of Maubeuge, in Franckenthal, in Ehrenbreistein, everywhere, our balloons stun the enemy and prepare his defeat.

Hemp, tar, potash, all that is missing is substituted by something else: we braid the ropes with plants until now neglected, even with animal materials.

But the manufacturing of saltpeter absorbs all our potash and we will be forced to close the factories of glass, soap, bleach, etc.: immediately soda replaces potash.

So far we have paid for tar: from now on our coal, our purified peat, will provide it.

Even graphite was missing, until recently supplied by England alone: —Conté (“all the sciences in the mind, all the arts in the hand,” said Monge), Conté, on his first encounter with our mountains, extracts the iron carbide from which he will create the pencils which our students still use today and which the English in turn will borrow from us.

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