# Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 7 - Section V

Layout 2
V. Denis Papin.
Denis Papin, born at Blois in 1647, was the son of Denis Papin, receiver-general of taxes, and an ancien. He had an uncle, a medical practitioner, Nicolas Papin, whose proficiency in scientific studies occasioned Denis’s resolution to study medicine. He was educated at the Protestant Academy of Angers, and passed for his medical degree in 1669, but owing probably to the hardships to which Huguenots were exposed, he could meet the fees with only a promise to pay. It was to science (not to medicine) that his heart was devoted. In 1671 we find him at Paris, as assistant to Huygens, the experimental philosopher. He was installed as a scientific worker in the French Academy. His experiments were directed to the atmospheric air, its weight, and the power of a vacuum; he printed a pamphlet on those experiments and their results in 1674, under the title of Expériences du vuide. Failing to obtain encouragement from the great Colbert, and feeling acutely his temporal disabilities as a Protestant in France, he emigrated to London in the year 1675.
Through the assistance of the Hon. Robert Boyle, he obtained scientific employment from the Royal Society, and added to his investigations the powers of steam. His remuneration was small, but he was more than consoled by receiving the title of Fellow 6f the Royal Society (F.R.S.) in the year 1681. At this period he invented what is known in English as Papin’s Digester, and in French as la marmite de Papin, a boiler with a safety-valve (the very first safety-valve), through which all indigestible matter was removed from bones, &c, and a mass of digestible food was collected together. Of this invention which came into general use, he published descriptions in 1681 and 1687.
In April 1682, Papin accepted an invitation from the Chevalier Sarotti, founder of the Venetian Academy of Natural Science, and he resided in Venice for about two years. Of this sojourn he gives an account in the Amsterdam edition of “La manière d’amollir les os et de faire cuire toutes sortes de viandes en peu de temps et à peu de frais, avec un description de la machine dont il faut se servir à cet effet.”
The success of this invention, and also his departure for Venice, are recorded in a lively manner by John Evelyn in his diary, thus:—
“1682. 12 April. — I went this afternoone with severall of the Royal Society to a supper, which was all dress’d, both fish and flesh, in Monsieur Papin’s Digestors, by which the hardest bones of beefe itselfe and mutton were made as soft as cheese without water or other liquor, and with lesse than 8 ounces of coales, producing an incredible quantity of gravy; and, for close of all, a jelly made of the bones of beef, the best for clearness and good relish, and the most delicious, that I had ever seene or tasted. We eat pike and other fish bones, and all without impediment; but nothing excelled the pigeons, which tasted just as if bak’d in a pie, all these being ​stew’d in their own juice without any addition of water, save what swam about the digester, as in balneo. The natural juice of all these provisions, acting on the grosser substances, reduc’d the hardest bones to tendernesse; but it is best descanted — with more particulars for extracting tinctures, preserving and stewing fruite, and saving fuel — in Dr. Papin’s booke, publish’d and dedicated to our Society, of which he is a member. He is since gone to Venice with the late Resident here (also a member of our Society), who carried this excellent mechanic, philosopher, and physician, to set up a philosophical meeting in that city. This philosophical supper caus’d much mirth amongst us, and exceedingly pleas’d all the company. I sent a glass of the jelley to my wife, to the reproch of all that the ladies ever made of the best harts-horn.”
One of the company was Sir Christopher Wren, President of the Royal Society. Amidst the constant remarks as to softening bones, he jocularly asked whether a process could not be discovered for hardening soft bones (alluding, perhaps, to the infirmities of age, or to the effeminacy of the men of that generation). Wren’s latest biographer (Lucy Phillimore), records this joke and adds: “A modification of Papin’s Digester-Kettle still exists, and goes by his name, though used far less than it deserves.”
Papin returned to London, and his reinstalment is noted in a Minute of the Royal Society, dated 23rd June 1684, and which explains his willingness to try his fortune in other lands. In that Minute, his remuneration is fixed at £7, 10s. per quarter. At this period he contrived, and produced, some machinery, including a tube, similar to one applied in the nineteenth century to the atmospheric railway, connected with an air-pump of his own invention. His object was to convey to a distance the mechanical power of water.
An accomplished German Prince, Charles Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, was attracted by Papin’s genius and abilities, and was also anxious for his aid in carrying out a grand enterprise of water-works. He offered him the Professorship of Mathematics in the University of Marbourg. This offer Papin accepted, and gave in his resignation to the Royal Society on 23rd November 1687. He settled at Marbourg, and there he married a widowed cousin. In 1688 he attempted, by means of gunpowder and gases, to obtain the desired vacuum for his atmospheric engine; but in 1690 he made a great step, by obtaining the vacuum through the alternate generation and condensation of steam. In the latter year he read a paper on SteamPower to the Philosophical Society of Leipsic. In 1692 our Royal Society made him a liberal offer, and he actually came to London to treat with the Society; but the Landgrave made a higher bid, and Papin remained at Marbourg. In 1695 he published a duodecimo volume, entitled, “Recueil de diverses pièces touchant quelques nouveaux machines, par D. Papin, professeur de mathématiques dans l’université de Marbourg et membre de la Societé royale de Londres. Cassel, J. Estienne, libraire de la Cour.” In 1696 the Landgrave made him a Privy Councillor, and he was frequently in Cassel to meet the calls of the public service. His incessant experiments and inventions excited great interest, but could not but arouse jealousies among monopolists and others interested in antiquated customs and institutions. He invented a steam-gun, and in the year 1707 he invited the Landgrave and the leading public men to witness its firing. An hour was fixed, but his Highness was not punctual; and while he was waited for, the guns exploded, and several persons were mortally wounded. Of course there were two explanations, which friends and opponents felt at liberty to select from. According to one, the Landgrave’s unpunctuality occasioned the deaths; according to the other, his unpunctuality happily saved his princely life. As was natural, the latter explanation was preferred, and Papin was disgraced. He, however, was permitted to leave Marbourg, on his own representation that he wished to make an experimental voyage in his steamboat, not only by river, but by sea, to London.
An English inventor had built a boat propelled by paddles moved by horsepower. Papin had seen this, and was led to construct a boat on the same model, but with his own steam-engine to propel it. When he was ready to embark and to steam away from Cassel in his original steam-boat, he was delayed by the necessity of obtaining a pass, and the pass which he did obtain was of doubtful efficacy, at eeast for any distance. His route was by river to Bremen, and thence by sea. He Embarked with his wife and family on 25th September 1707, and proceeded, with the knowledge of the opposition of the boatmen of the Fulda and the Weser, who were combined as a trade-union against all innovations. He arrived safely at Loch, the junction of the two rivers; but at that spot, the boatmen demanded his machinery. While he hesitated, they dragged it out of the boat, and shattered it ​into fragments. The broken-hearted inventor sent his family back to Cassel, and he himself was again a lonely refugee in London, and was content to return to the service of English men of science. The only remaining traces of him are in his letters to Sir Hans Sloane, the secretary of the Royal Society; the last, to which I find reference, is dated 23rd January 1712. The date of his death has not been ascertained.
Professor W. J. Macquorn Rankine in the “Imperial Dictionary of Biography” has truly said : — “In connection with the steam-engine, Papin was unquestionably the inventor of the safety-valve and of the piston; and though his inventions never attained any practical success, they formed essential steps towards, and elements in, the inventions of his followers.”
* ↑ See Haag’s “La France Protestante;” and a Memoir of Papin, by Henry C. Ewart, in the Sunday Magazine for 1880.
* ↑ In the Library of the Grand Duke of Hesse there is a manuscript by Papin, on painless operations in surgery (Traité des operations sans douleur).