Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1886-06-02
FOUNTAINS AT VERSAILLES.
The Poor Mechanic Who Invented the
Famous Marty Water-WOrks, and the
OhevRlter Who Got All the Reward for


not have the pleasure OF seeing the
fountains play out there this summer,
writes q Paris correspondent of the
New Orleans Picayune. Something
seems to have happened to certain hy-
draulic wheels, and although in Ameri-
ca they would be repaired in a week
or ten days, the authorities here have
declared that it will be impossible to
mend them soon enough to bring water
from Marty for the next six months.
BY the way, there is q curious history
about these Marty water-works.
When Louis XIV. was laying out the
gardens at Versailles he discovered that
the springs and ponds included in the
grounds were insufficient for supplying
the fountains of the park with water.
His engineers studied over the matter,
and finally it was determined on the
construction of q machine to bring it
from the Seine by means of an aque-
DUCT The plan accepted out Of the
several presented was one by the Chew
aller de Vile, an engineer connected
with the works in progress at Yer
sailles, but the real author of the
Marty machine, considered at the time
one Of the wonders of the world, and
the scientific chef d'muvre Of Louis
XIV, was poor carpenter named
Renequin Sualem. Shut up in little
cottage at Bongival he patiently elab-
GRATED the diagrams of the complicat-
ed ensemble of beams, wheels, and
dams, for which Chevalier de Vile got
all the credit, and he submitted to this
injustice rather than lose his only
means of support, the small salary
paid him as subordinate to the
Chevaiier lie Vile. The machine was
intended to force the water of the
Seine to the top of the aqueduct.
This was accomplished by Il wheels,
each 80 feet in diameter, working "a
pumps, which carried the water to a
first reservoir dug in the side of the
hill, whence 70 other pumps carried it
to q second reservoir, and from there
it was forced by rs pumps to the res
ervoir from which it flowed into the
aqueduct. In all there were 221
pumps to raise the water to height
of 5O4 feet from the surface of the
stream to carry 1T distance some
what less than two miles. The inaug-
uration took place in 1852, in the
presence of Louis XIV, and his court,
who were stationed on the top of the
great tower of the aqueduct
At a signal given by the
king the fourteen wheels commenced
turning, and in g. few minutes
the water was flowing into the granite
basin at his feet. The chevalier was
overwhelmed with praise, and rewards
in the shape of titles, honors, and
money were freely bestowed on him,
but poor Sualem got nothing and soon
afterward died in poverty. Since then
his name has been given to the quai
on the river nearest to the machine he
erected, q tardy and sterilereparation.
The machine cost 100000 livres, a
sum which would nowadays be equiva-
lent to $15, 100000. It's capacity
was six thousand cubic yards of water
per day: but this was found to be an
insufficient quantity to realize the
project of Louis XIV, which was to
have the fountains playing all the
time. Then another scheme was de-
vised, that of turning the little river
Eure into g. reservoir, and of utilizing
it's water for the purpose. Work was
commenced and pushed forward act
lively. The erection of an aqueduct,
the remains of which still exist, near
the village of Maritenon, was under
taken, canals were dug, and more than
thirty thousand soldiers labored on
the enterprise. The sickness caused
by the turning over OF such masses of
earth WAS so fatal among the troops
that wagon-loads of dead bodies were
carried away from the hospitals by
night, and as secretly as possible, in
order not to cause a panic among
those who were well enough to work.
The project was persisted in for sever
al years, and only abandonedin 1858,
when the war required the presence of
the soldiers elsewhere. According to
Dangeau, Louis XIV. was not sorry to
have q good excuse to abandon an un-
dertaking the cost of which far exceeded
the estimates. 1t is a well known fact
that the king was so ashamed of the
sums spent at Versailles that with his
own hands he burnt the records relat-
ing to the matter. Since it's compile
tion the cost of maintaining the Marty
machine has constantly increased,
and at the same time the quantity of
water it could supply diminished. At
the commencement of the present cent
ury the supply dropped to 800 cubic
yards of water per day. The machin-
cry was repaired and improved several
times, but the results were still 1nsat-
isfactory. In 1857 it was entirely re-
built, and two years later the Mansart
aqueduct was constructed, which
supplied fairgrounds at Versailles with
from 10000 to 5000 cubic yards OF
water per day. This instead of beinga
masked fortress of rafters and wheels
which occupied a surface of 900 square
yards and deafened the neighborhood
with it's noise, and which it took Sua-
lem seven years to build, was a ma
chine, simple in it's parts, working with
accuracy and noiselessly. From the
small brick house that sheltered the
machine, the water is pumped directly
into an aqueduct that carries it to a
reservoir with g. capacity of 100000
cubic yards and from the reservoir it
is distributed through three mains to
Marty, Versailles, and St. Cloud.