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Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie
Born	(1626-03-01)March 1, 1626 Chabanais
Died	November 11, 1688(1688-11-11) (aged 62) Versailles
Nationality (legal)	French
Occupation(s)	Gardener, agronomist

Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie (1 March 1626 (Chabanais, France) - 11 November 1688 (Versailles, France)) was a French lawyer, gardener, and agronomist who was the creator of the king's potager (kitchen garden) at Versailles.

Biography

He was the second of three sons of Guillaume de La Quintinie, public prosecutor and then councillor to the king, who was descended from a family that had resided in Chabanais since the 14th century, and his wife, Françoise Morand, who was descended from a celebrated family of surgeons. He studied at the Jesuit's secondary school in Poitiers, then at the college, where he studied philosophy and law. Intending to become a lawyer, he completed his legal studies, at the conclusion of which he was admitted to the parlement in Paris as a lawyer and as the queen's master of requests.

In 1653, he became the private tutor of the only son of the president of the Court of Finances, Jean Tambonneau. He would have accompanied his student on his grand tour of Italy, a nation that was already reputed for its gardens, which inspired him and in which he discovered his avocation. (However, the claim that La Quintinie made this trip is probably false, as no document attests it.) During the journey, he visited the botanical garden in Montpellier.

On his (supposed) return from Italy, he decided to quit the Bar in order to devote himself to gardening. Keenly interested in such ancient authors as Pliny the Elder and Columella, he also informed himself about modern theories and applied himself to their practice thanks to president Tambonneau, who entrusted to him the garden of his town house located on the rue de l’Université in Paris. His salons were frequented by such eminent persons as the Grand Condé, Colbert, and mademoiselle de Montpensier — among others.

He subsequently made two journeys to England, as many French gardeners did at the time ; he would maintain a correspondence with the Royal Society of London. He was asked by James II, king of England, to take charge of the king's gardens, as had the French garden designer André Mollet, but La Quintinie declined the offer, preferring to return to France.

Statue of Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie overlooking the great central square of the Potager du roi at Versailles. He holds a grafted plant in his left hand and a sickle in his right hand.

In 1661, the superintendent of finances, Nicolas Fouquet, put him in charge of managing the gardens of his chateau, Vaux-le-Vicomte. He was a member of a group of distinguished craftsmen that helped build and decorate the chateau and that included the landscape architect André Le Nôtre, the architect Louis Le Vau, and the painter Charles Le Brun.

In the same year, after the downfall of Fouquet, this group passed into the service of king Louis XIV. La Quintinie was initially put in charge of managing the kitchen garden that had been created by Louis XIV at Versailles in order to furnish fruits and vegetables for the king's table.

In 1662, he married Marguerite Joubert, who gave him three sons: François-Jérôme, Michel, and Gabriel-Louis. Only Michel survived him, and in 1690, he had published his father's treatise Instruction pour les jardins fruitiers et potagers (Instructions for fruit and vegetable gardens), in which he is presented making improvements to vegetable and fruit gardens at Sceaux and Rambouillet.

Subsequently, he was in charge of the gardens of some of the great figures of his age, notably, in 1665 Chantilly, the residence of the Prince of Condé, then Choisy-le-Roi, the residence of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, then Rambouillet, the residence of the duke de Montausier, and still later Sceaux in the service of Colbert. In 1667, he made improvements at Versailles to the old vegetable garden of Louis XIII.

On 17 March 1670, he was presented by Colbert to Louis XIV, who named him "director of the fruit and vegetable gardens of all the royal residences," a position that was created specially for him.

In 1678, he undertook the creation of a new kitchen garden for the king, which was completed five years later in 1683. This garden still exists and has been listed as a historic monument since 1921.

In reward for services rendered, he was ennobled in 1687 by Louis XIV. He died on 11 November 1688 in the house that the king had had built for him, near the kitchen garden of Versailles. Louis XIV confided to his widow, "Madam, we have suffered a great loss which we will never be able to recoup."

Achievements

During his service to the king, La Quintinie did not cease to improve his gardens:

• acclimatization of such tender species as figs and melons ;
• cultivation of oranges in the open air, although they would be covered during the winter months with a removable greenhouse made of glass and wood ;
• production of fruits and vegetables out of season: lettuces in January, strawberries in March, etc. ;
• forerunner in the cultivation of early fruits and vegetables: towards this goal, he developed, among other things, a system of cultivation under cold frames and cloches (glass covers) ;
• technique of training fruit trees to grow in espalier (i.e., against a wall or on a trellis). In this way, pear trees, peach trees (more than thirty varieties), plum trees, and fig trees were grown in warm locations and sheltered from the prevailing winds ;
• creation, on the same principle as an orangery, of a greenhouse for growing figs, in order to provide the king with figs from mid-June through the next six months ;
• emphasizing the importance of grafting for the improvement of plants ;
• refutation of popular misconceptions, particularly regarding the supposed influence of the phases of the moon.

Publications

In 1690, two years after his death, La Quintinie's son had published his Instruction pour les jardins fruitiers et potagers (Instructions for fruit and vegetable gardens), which collected his experience and his thoughts, particularly on the forcing of vegetables (i.e., inducing them to mature outside of their natural season) and on the pruning of fruit trees.

Coat of arms of de la Quintinie

Coat of arms

Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie was ennobled in 1687 by king Louis XIV, who awarded him a coat of arms bearing the following blazon:

Silver with an azure chevron accompanied above by two azure stars and below by a green tree.

Legacy

• One of his students was René Dahuron (ca. 1660–1740), who wrote about horticulture and fruit trees and who became gardener to Friedrich Wilhelm I, the king of Prussia.
• Every year during the first weekend of October, the town of his birth, Chabanais, celebrates de la Quintinie and gardeners.
• Frédéric Richaud published a novel titled Monsieur le Jardinier (Mr. Gardener), in 1999, centered on the figure of de la Quintinie.

Tunnel boring machines: history

Wilson's machine anticipated modern TBMs in the sense that it employed cutting discs, like those of a disc harrow, which were attached to the rotating head of the machine. In contrast to traditional chiseling or drilling and blasting, this innovative method of removing rock relied on simple metal wheels to apply that transient high pressure that fractured the rock.

Also in 1853, the American Ebenezer Talbot also patented a TBM that employed Wilson's cutting discs, although they were mounted on rotating arms, which in turn were mounted on a rotating plate. In the 1870s, John D. Brunton of England built a machine employing cutting discs that were mounted eccentrically on rotating plates, which in turn were mounted eccentrically on a rotating plate, so that the cutting discs would travel over almost all of the rock face that was to be removed.

The first TBM that tunneled a substantial distance was invented in 1863 and improved in 1875 by British Army officer Major Frederick Edward Blackett Beaumont (1833-1895); Beaumont's machine was further improved in 1880 by British Army officer Major Thomas English (1843-1935). In 1875 the British Parliament and the French National Assembly approved the construction of a tunnel under the English Channel; English's TBM was chosen for the project. The cutting head of English's TBM consisted of a conical drill bit behind which were a pair of opposing arms on which were mounted cutting discs. From June 1882 to March 1883, the machine tunneled, through chalk, a total of 6,036 feet (1.84 km). However, despite these successes, the cross-Channel tunnel project was abandoned in 1883 after the British military raised fears that the tunnel might be used as an invasion route. Nevertheless, in 1883, this TBM was used to bore a railway ventilation tunnel — 7 feet (2.1 m) in diameter and 6,750 feet (2 km) long — between Birkenhead and Liverpool, England, through sandstone under the Mersey River.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, inventors continued to design, build, and test TBMs in response to the need for tunnels for railroads, subways, sewers, water supplies, etc. TBMs employing rotating arrays of drills or hammers were patented. TBMs that resembled giant hole saws were proposed. Other TBMs consisted of a rotating drum with metal tines on its outer surface, or a rotating circular plate covered with teeth, or revolving belts covered with metal teeth. However, all of these TBMs proved expensive, cumbersome, and unable to excavate hard rock; interest in TBMs therefore declined. Nevertheless, TBM development continued in potash and coal mines, where the rock was softer.

The breakthrough in hard-rock TBMs came in 1952 when Fouad Khalil "Bill" Mittry, Jr. (1923-2003) of the Mittry Construction Co.

For a history of tunnel boring machines, see:

• Henry Sturgis Drinker, Treatise on Explosive Compounds, Machine Rock Drills and Blasting (New York, New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1883), pp. 191-194.
• George J. Bancroft (1908) "A history of the tunnel boring machine," Mining Science, 58 : 65-68, 85-88, 106-108, 125-127, 145-146, 165-167.
• Graham West, Innovation and the Rise of the Tunnelling Industry (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Chapter 11: Hard rock tunnelling machines.
• Bernhard Maidl, Leonhard Schmid, Willy Ritz, Martin Herrenknecht, David S. Sturge (trans.), Hardrock Tunnel Boring Machines (Berlin, Germany: Ernst & Sohn, 2008), Chapter 1: Historical development and future challenges.
• Gary B. Hemphill, Practical Tunnel Construction (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), Chapter 7: Tunnel-boring machines: History of tunnel-boring machine.

Linalool: history

Linalool was named and studied by the German chemist Friedrich Wilhelm Semmler. At that time, Semmler also isolated, from oil of coriander, one of the optical isomers of linalool; he named it coriandrol. The other optical isomer of linalool, namely licaréol, was isolated, named, and studied by the French chemist Philippe Barbier.