Nicolas-Jacques Conté
4th August, 1755
The Age of Reason that spanned the 17th and 18th Centuries was an explosion of intellectual and philosophical thought that emphasized reason, science and individualism over tradition and religious authority. It spawned not only what was to become widely known as ‘science’, but liberty, progress, tolerance and the separation of state and church. Prominent figures of the Enlightenment included philosophers like John Locke, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, whose ideas significantly influenced political revolutions, such as those in America and France, and helped shape modern democratic societies.
It also gave us the idea of the polymath where no longer was it enough for the sophisticated gentleman (and it was nearly always gentlemen, of course) to be an expert in one thing - painting, for example - he also had to be skilled in at least a few of the other great pursuits of the time. Painter, necromancer, alchemist, turnip whittler and time traveller. That sort of thing.
One man for whom the term polymath might have been invented was the Frenchman Nicolas-Jacques Conté, who was, by various measures, a painter, aeronaut, engineer, army officer and inventor of the pencil.
Not much is known about his early life except was born at Saint-Céneri-près-Sées (now Aunou-sur-Orne) in Normandy, France, as one of six children, in a lowly family of peasant farmers. The young Conté showed skill with his hands from an early age, apparently fashioning a violin from a piece of wood with nothing but a pocket knife. He was given a job as assistant gardener at the Hotel Dieu de Sées, a convent where two of his sisters served as nuns. There he was given the job of apprentice to a painter who had been commissioned to decorate the chapel with a series of murals. His tasks included mixing pigment and cleaning brushes, giving him a basic education in simple chemical processes. When the painter fell ill, he argued that he should be allowed to do one mural which, if considered unsuccessful, could be painted over. When his attempt proved successful, he was given the job of completing the work and his career as a painter began.
Not content with painting, he soon developed an interest in the new pursuit of flight, manufacturing and flying a hot air balloon which he successfully demonstrated in the town square. His improvements to the lining of the balloon and his early adoption of hydrogen gas contributed to the scientific study of aeronautics.
He took up portrait painting, because why not, becoming much sought after and which generated a significant income. This wealth allowed him to pursue new interests in mechanics and science and by 1794 he was lecturing in chemistry, physics and mechanics, inventing a telegraphic system for communicating by balloon. Around this time, he lost an eye after an explosion whilst experimenting with gases.
At the end of the 18th Century, nearly all graphite for use in drawing was supplied by a single mine near Borrowdale in England. The newly formed French Republic had frightened the spine out of the British monarchy who, as a result, had blockaded France, cutting off nearly all supply. Conté was charged with solving the problem, which he did by mixing graphite powder with various amounts of clay and then firing it in a kiln, which produced a material that was not only as good as pure graphite for writing and drawing but also had several advantages. The hardness of the pencil could be altered by adjusting the ratio of graphite to clay, leading to the creation of pencils with varying degrees of softness and darkness. Conté also pioneered the idea of forming the ‘lead’ into cylinders and then sandwiching it between two pieces of wood, thereby inventing the modern pencil.
Conté was an officer in the scientific corps of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt of 1798-1801. A skilled machinist, and his first task was to replace all the measuring equipment that was lost when the flagship of the invasion fleet sank on arrival. After that, he gathered information on the craftsmen of Egypt, visiting their workshops and making finished drawings of their tools and methods, all of which would be published in Description de l'Egypte (1809-1828).
He tried his hand at ballooning again whilst in Egypt, being called to demonstrate a flight on 1st December, 1798. The demonstration ended in disaster, with the balloon catching fire and the locals believing that far from being treated to a display of the new art of flying, had instead been lured there as a ruse by the French who had then launched an attack. Somehow, he managed to have a second attempt with another balloon, which he launched in front of a crowd of 100,000 in Cairo. The Egyptians weren’t buying it, convinced it was either a French trick or a useless gimmick. The Islamic scholar, Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, in his account of the flight, wrote that:
Their claim that this apparatus is like a vessel in which people sit and travel to other countries in order to discover news and other falsifications did not appear to be true.
While he was in Egypt, he invented a new form of barometer and developed methods for producing coins, cardboard, surgical instruments, gunpowder, ovens, windmills and telescopes. He also made graphical copies of the Rosetta Stone and invented a mechanical engraving machine. On his return to France, Conté was commissioned by the government to produce the illustrated works that the newly created Egyptian Commission planned to publish. The number of monuments, artifacts and objets d’art that had to be represented was huge and the detail of the engraving alone, using manual processes, would have required a lot of money and taken many years. Conté designed an engraving machine by which all the work on the backgrounds, skies and masses of the monuments could be done easily and quickly. The usefulness of this machine was not limited to the work on Egypt and soon other artists were using it for their own work.
Nicolas-Jacques Conté had married Louise-Catherine Delahaye on August 14th, 1788. When she died in 1804, his grief brought about a sudden end to his creative drive.
“Now I am no longer filled with the desire to please her.”
He died on December 5th, 1805, from an aneurysm and was buried at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.