Blaise Pascal and the Duc de Roannez's Steam Engine

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) does not cease being a geometer. He does not end up leaving science definitively for religion, as often thought. On the contrary, less than two years before his death, he returns to the question of vacuum and develops a new engine.

The project is to further investigate the duc de Roannez and Pascal's steam machine. Their musket barrel, adapted to steam, has not been the subject of in-depth research yet. However, Pascal’s steam barrel, loaned to Christiaan Huygens in 1660-1661, is an essential link between Robert Boyle’s air pump on the one hand, and Denis Papin’s steam engine on the other. What these machines have in common is vacuum. In the second half of the seventeenth century, vacuum thus became used as a paradoxical driving force, due to atmospheric pressure.

This research also provides a better knowledge of the exchanges between the learned societies in Paris and London at the time of their creation.