Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Thank you, Cynthia S.! Cynthia is a longtime reader of this journal. She took up the challenge of finding out the original purpose of the complex at 87 boulevard de Grenelle, and she succeeded in solving the mystery! And she gave me the clues I needed in order to continue my research. She sent me a link to a web site, which informs us that this interesting block was Le Centre technique de l'Aluminium, built in 1942. Tom must have been drawn to it because they were both born in the same year. The complex’s architect, Gustave Saacké (1884-1975), and two other men in 1932 won a medal in the art competitions for the Olympic Games for their design of a circus for bullfighting. The artist of the bas reliefs was Salvator Riolo, who signed his works “T. Riolo.” The scenes are referred to as “stakhanoviste;” i.e., depicting hard workers. “Héroult” refers to the electrolysis process used to prepare aluminum for manufacturing; a man named Charles Martin Hall and a man named Paul Héroult both applied for patents for process in 1886 – Hall in the U.S., and Héroult in France. Naturally, it is the French man’s name used on the panel on the boulevard de Grenelle to commemorate this scientific event. Héroult claims to have come up with the process in 1883, three years prior to the patent, while at the famous School of Mines in Paris. If you look closely at the panel with Héroult’s name on the building at 87 boulevard de Grenelle, you see what looks like an attempt made by someone to change the “1883” to “1886.” I smell controversy. I do more research. Indeed, there was a quarrel between Hall and Héroult about this electrolysis patent. Patent laws in America were worded differently than patent laws in France, making the dispute impossible to resolve. In the end, Hall agreed to limit his use of his patent rights to America, and Héroult agreed to limit his to Europe. You techie types can read about the Hall-Héroult process in Wikipedia. I will restrain the science writer in me, and I won’t go into the details here, as difficult as that is for me. I will say that is was Hall who started the first large-scale aluminum manufacturing plant, and it became ALCOA (Aluminum Company of America). And I also must point out that Hall attended Oberlin College, in Ohio. He started there when he was only 16, in 1880. I found a French white paper on this patent quarrel that claims that Hall’s experiments didn’t begin until 1886. But that simply is not true. He began his experiments in 1881 at Oberlin. His older sister, Julia Brainerd Hall, helped him with his experiments. Have you ever wondered why the French and others spell it “aluminium” and in America, we spell it as “aluminum”? That’s because Hall misspelled the word on a flyer he used for publicity purposes. At least, this is what Oberlin College claims. I’ve known plenty of engineers and scientists who can’t spell worth a darn, so I believe this story. Héroult was a young brainiac, too. He and Hall were both born in 1863. When Héroult was only 15, he read someone’s treatise on aluminum, and that’s all it took to get him going, because at that time, aluminum was more expensive than silver. (The Hall-Héroult process reduced the price of aluminum tremendously.) While they were both discovering the Hall-Héroult process at roughly the same time, the two young men had very different personalities. Héroult had a party animal reputation, and so it isn’t much of a surprise that it was Hall who started up the first big aluminum manufacturing plant. He had to move from Ohio to Pittsburgh to do it, in order to get the financing, but he did it. Héroult, meanwhile, kept on inventing. In 1900, he invented an electric arc furnace that eventually replaced big smelters in many steel plants. His many inventions were said to come not from a disciplined, scientific approach, but rather from whims or ideas that would seemingly come to him “out of the blue,” according to Christian Bickert, an executive with the former French aluminium company, Pechiney (bought by Alcan in 2003). Interestingly, Hall and Héroult both died in 1914. Back to the building at 87 rue de Grenelle. A web site for CalvaCom refers to this location as a “magnificent building,” the former école technique de Pechiney, meaning that the Centre Technique d’Aluminium was actually a technical school for the Pechiney company. Pechiney was, in 1897, known as the Société des Produits Chimiques d'Alais et de la Camargue – hence the reference to the Camargue in one of Riolo’s bas reliefs on the boulevard de Grenelle building. At the point when it was purchased by Alcan (Canada’s aluminium company), Pechiney was the fourth largest aluminium manufacturer in the world. The third largest is ALCOA, which still exists as ALCOA. But Alcan has now been purchased by Rio Tinto, which makes Rio Tinto Alcan the world’s largest aluminium manufacturer (with Pechiney absorbed into it). Number two is Rusal, which is, you guessed it, Russia’s aluminium company. One of the historical events that may have given ALCOA the edge over Pechiney was World War I. The fact that Pechiney was located in the south of France made it less affected by that war; however, it did have to sell its American plant to ALCOA, then known as the Aluminum Company of America. Another irony in Pechiney’s history is that when Héroult invented the process for producing aluminum more cost effectively, he offered to sell it to Pechiney. Pechiney refused to buy it! Maybe the company didn’t like Héroult’s party animal reputation. So Héroult sold the rights to the Société Électrométallurgique Française, which then destroyed Pechiney’s aluminum business through competition in 1889. Pechiney had to buy a competing firm in 1897, then started L’Aluminium Francais, which eventually united all French aluminium producers. Here’s another interesting twist: At the time that Pechiney refused to buy Héroult’s patent, guess who was president of the company’s board of directors? None other than Émile Guimet, the man who founded the famous Guimet museum of Asian art in Paris in 1887! We were also surprised by dinner last night at La Gauloise. There must have been a change in chef since last year. The food is actually spicy now! We started with a gazpacho that was as light as can be. It was made from raw, puréed tomato flesh, lemon juice, and tabasco sauce. Zingy, and delicious! Then I had the joue de cochon, which was actually three pig’s cheeks, very tender, served with a couple of steamed potatoes. The brown sauce on the extremely tender pork was quite spicy! Tom ordered the thick filet of beef from the Aubrac, which came with a dark brown sauce that was, you guessed it, very spicy! He said that the steak was the best you could find anywhere in Europe. The gazpacho and joue de cochon were on the two-course, 24-euro prix fixe menu. Tom’s superb steak was 28 euros, I think. This is not bad at all for a nice French resto with great service. Speaking of the service, the manager of the place last night was a petite young woman, and she exuded competence. Other than one Indian man who buses tables, we did not see any of the regular men who we’ve seen working at La Gauloise for years. Perhaps that was because it was the big holiday, the Feast of the Assumption. The Assumption, which is celebrated as a national holiday in many countries, is something that most non-Catholic Americans don’t know about. I didn’t, for a long time, until we started living in France for the summer in 1998. That year, we must have arrived in Paris right around that holiday. For those of you who aren’t Catholic: this holiday celebrates the Virgin Mary being taken up into heaven at the end of her life on Earth. There is always a procession of faithful Catholics on this holiday in Paris. 4,800 people participated in this yesterday. A statue of the Virgin Mary is carried through the streets, along the Seine, and people follow. You can see photos of this procession on Le Parisien’s web site. We didn’t go, since we are not fond of crowds. Instead, we stayed home and read books. I’m reading Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad. This is what this esteemed author has to say about those who keep journals such as this: “ . . . only those rare natures that are made up of pluck,
endurance, devotion to duty for duty’s sake, and invincible determination may
hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal
and not sustain a shameful defeat.” He wrote that most people who attempt this task will be able to sustain it for only 21 days, at most. This Paris Journal of mine has been going on for years. Pluck, endurance, devotion. I love it! So that’s why my friend Peggy said, “You are so good to keep it going every day. Wow!” Now I understand what she meant. Je suis stakhanoviste, peut etre? |
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Flowers
on the Champ de Mars.
Bas
relief refers to the Héroult process, which the Pechiney company refused to
buy.
Scenes
from the café/garden in the Petit Palais, above and
below.
Gaspacho, spicy and light.
Joue de cochon, spicy and tender pork
Great
steak, with spicy peppercorn sauce.
Allumettes, or matchstick fries,
came with Tom’s steak. |
