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A. A. Fesquet drawings and notebooks
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Held at: The Historical and Interpretive Collections of The Franklin Institute [Contact Us]222 N 20th St, Philadelphia, PA, 19103
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the The Historical and Interpretive Collections of The Franklin Institute. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Adolphe Amdée Fesquet was born in France around 1833. He was a French chemist and engineer, active during the second half of the 19th century. In the 1850s, he attended the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, a renowned engineering school in the suburbs of Paris, France. By 1865, Fesquet had moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a chemical engineer and became involved in translating various French technical books into English. Some of these books became standard texts and reference works and can still be found for sale. Fesquet was a member of the Franklin Institute. He died December 26, 1894 in Philadelphia.
This collection, dating from 1841 to 1865, consists of pencil and ink drawings, some of which are colored, and all of which are annotated in French. Additionally, there are notebooks and unbound notes, at least some of which are from Fesquet's training at École Centrale, and two unlabeled portraits, presumably of Fesquet. A partial inventory is available on-site.
The drawings depict fabrique de glucose (5); lavis (14); geometrical drawings and exercises (20); metallurgy of iron (27); industrial drawings including machines and machine parts such as gears, and buildings (14); and architectural drawings such as building plans and decorative aspects of buildings, bridges, and stations (31).
The bound notebooks relate to the topics of industrial chemistry, arithmetic, and religious instruction. The unbound notes are from École Centrale and include notes on the topics of machinery, strength of solids, various projects, and course notes on metallurgy, hydraulics, and strength of materials.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2014-2016 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact The Historical and Interpretive Collections of The Franklin Institute directly for more information.
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Organization
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- Publisher
- The Historical and Interpretive Collections of The Franklin Institute
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Sarah Leu and Jack McCarthy through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact The Historical and Interpretive Collections of The Franklin Institute for information about accessing this collection.