Jean Louis Trasenster
Jean Louis Trasenster (1816-1887)
1887 Obituary [1]
JEAN LOUIS TRASENSTER was born at Beaufays, near Liege, Belgium, on 10th February 1816.
After receiving a good general education at the Liege public school, he entered the science classes in the University, where in 1836 he and one other were the first two students in the newly established department of mining engineering.
In 1838 he gained by examination the rank of mine manager, and in 1842 was the first to win the title of government mining engineer.
In 1840, before he had yet taken all his diplomas, he was placed in charge of the class of elementary statics in the University of Liege.
In 1844 he was appointed lecturer on mining, and continued to hold that post till 1879.
In 1845 he became inspector of the junior department of the Mining School.
In 1846 he was made inspector of the practical department and professor of the faculty of sciences; and rose by successive promotions to the highest rank in 1855, having meanwhile in 1849 been also appointed secretary to the University.
In 1880 he was made Rector of the University; and in 1883 this appointment was renewed for a further period of three years. During the thirty-five years that he lectured on mining he had the training of nearly fifteen hundred mining engineers, of whom nearly three hundred score foreigners. When the "Association des Ingenieurs sortis de l'Ecole de Liege" was founded in 1847 by twenty-nine of his former pupils, he was elected their first President; and he was re-elected annually for thirty-nine successive years until 1886, when he retired in consequence of failing health, the Association then numbering nearly a thousand members. His retirement from the presidency was coincident with the jubilee of the mining engineering department of the University; and the occasion was celebrated on 24th October 1886 by a large gathering of the members of the Association, all of whom had received their professional training from himself.
At the commencement of his career he acted as consulting engineer to the John Cockerill Company, Seraing. He was also chairman of the Ougree Coal and Iron Works, near Liege, being re-elected for thirty-eight years; and was a director of the Alstaden Collieries in Prussia, the Maastricht Paper Mills, and the Herve Railways near Liege.
In 1844 was published his treatise on ventilating machines, and in 1852 that on rotary ventilators; in 1848 and 1872 appeared his works on the draining of mines, and in 1872 and 1878 those on the use of compressed air, and of water pressure.
It was at his instigation that dressed stone was first employed as tubbing for lining the shafts of coal-pits at Alstaden and Seraing; and he got various improvements carried out, both in the employment of compressed air for sinking pits through watery measures, and in the construction of man-engines. In the government educational work he took an active part, and occupied a responsible and prominent position in connection with that department from 1850.
He was one of the editing committee of the "Annales des Travaux publics," and of the "Revue universelle des Mines," to both of which publications ho contributed important articles. At the international exhibitions of 1862 in London, 1867 in Paris, and 1873 in Vienna, he was a juror; and to him was due the introduction in Liege of public baths and wash-houses.
On the occasion of the Summer Meeting of this Institution in Belgium in 1883, he was nominated an Honorary Life Member of the Institution (see Proceedings 1883, pages 310-311); and when the Association of Engineers from Liege University were in return invited to the Summer Meeting of the Institution in London in 1886, he would have accompanied them as their President, had he not been unfortunately detained at home by his wife's illness, which terminated shortly afterwards in her death; and he himself died on 1st January 1887, in the seventy-first year of his age.