General Arthur Jules Morin (1795-1880)
Director, Conservatoire Imperial des Arts et Metiers, Paris
1867 Honorary Life Member of I Mech E
. . . After 1839 his time was divided between his duties of Professor at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, Paris, where the Chair of Applied Mechanics had been specially established for him, and the various positions he successively occupied in the direction of the Government powder and saltpetre works. . .
1881 Obituary [3]
General ARTHUR JULES MORIN was born in Paris on 17th October 1795, and received his early education in Italy, but returned to Paris before 1814 and completed his mathematical studies at the Ecole Polytechnique; after which he entered the artillery service, and in 1823 took part as lieutenant in the Spanish war.
He was then appointed assistant professor of mechanics in the Artillery and Military Engineering School at Metz. Here he edited the first publications of Poncelet, whom he shortly afterwards succeeded there as professor. His celebrated experiments on friction, slipping, rolling, traction, and belts, were carried out at Metz, the success of his researches being largely due to the use of different forms of dynamometer devised by himself.
In 1839 a professorship of Applied Mechanics was specially established for him at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, Paris, of which in 1849 he was appointed the Director.
In 1844 he was elected into the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of France.
He was a juror in the London Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862, and a general commissioner for the Paris Exhibition of 1855. His "Aide Memoire" is one of the most popular of the French works known in England; and his treatises on practical mechanics, steam engines, pumps, hydraulic motors, strength of materials, and ventilation and warming, rank as standard works.
He carried out the ventilation of the Corps Legislatif, and of the Opera, Chatelet, Gaiete, Lyrique, and Vaudeville theatres in Paris; and was concerned also in the sanitary arrangements of various large hospitals. For many years he was a director of the Northern Railway of France.
In 1867, on the occasion of the first meeting of the Institution held in Paris, lie was nominated by the Council an Honorary Life Member of the Institution, in recognition of the valuable aid received from him as Director of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers; and at that meeting he contributed a paper on the Ventilation of public buildings, describing his system of ventilation as carried out in the Conservatoire, the Theatre Lyrique, and one of the public schools. The Institution enjoyed the advantage of a renewal of the same good offices, on the part both of himself and of the establishment which ho directed, when the Paris meeting was repeated in 1878.
His death took place on 7th February 1880, after a short illness, in the middle of his eighty-fifth year.