Jacques-Constantine Périer (1742–1818)

Jacques-Constantin Périer was born in 1742 into a family of merchants in Paris. He was self-taught in mechanics and saw early on the potential of steam power for water supply and other functions. In 1777-8 he and his brother Auguste Charles Périer founded a pioneering joint-stock company, the ‘Compagnie des eaux de Paris’, which won the right to supply water to private homes, public fountains and fire hydrants in the French capital. James Watt designed engines for them, Boulton & Watt supplied parts and the British ironmaster John Wilkinson supplied cast-iron water mains. Smaller pipes of wood and other engine parts were made in workshops that Périer built at Chaillot. He installed his first steam engine on a specially built canal from the River Seine at Chaillot in 1781. It pumped water to four interconnected stone-walled reservoirs at Passy. The buildings added considerable architectural status to the whole enterprise. Périer installed further engines and water intakes across the river at Gros-Caillou and upstream at Gare de l'Hôpital and the Arsenal. An original model of the double-acting engine of 1785 is in the Museum of Arts and Trades in Paris. By 1786, the company supplied 20,000 private houses as well as numerous public fountains. However, it suffered from rising costs and falling share prices and the city of Paris took back control and dismissed the brothers. They won the company back in court but continued to have difficulties. The Chaillot engine continued in use until 1900.

Meanwhile, Périer decided to build and sell steam engines himself at Chaillot for mines and factories across France. He paid an operating fee to Boulton & Watt under licence for his first waterworks engines but when he and his brother founded the company Fréres Périer they began copying Watt’s designs without permission. In 1786 Watt made the journey to see the works for himself. As a result, Boulton & Watt sued the brothers for breaching their patent. The company was forced to pay a substantial sum in damages. Watt wrote that he regretted Périer’s dishonesty as he ran ‘a most magnificent and commodious manufactory for steam engines where he executes all the parts most exceedingly well’. The works continued to make engines after the dispute was settled. The Littry mining museum in Normandy displays a winding engine made by them in 1800.