gautier.html

Born in Paris in a modest family, Paul Gautier, started to work as an apprentice at the age of 13. Five years later, he was a worker in the Secrétan's manufacture, then, in 1866, he moved to the workshop of Wilhem Eichens to whom he succeeded later on.
His instruments are closely related to the tendencies of the astronomy of the end of the XIXth century, and are remarkable for the realization of its screws, graduated dials and mountings of telescopes. He provided most of the astrographs dedicated to the "Carte du Ciel" (Sky Chart). The first sample was made to his own expense, in 1885.
His expertise had no equivalent in France in this field. Most of the large instruments that equipped the French observatories came out of his workshop. His most important devices included equatorial and coude refractors, telescopes. They were built for French, Austrian, Greek, Dutch, Vatican, Spanish, Algerian, Argentine, and Brazilian observatories.
His career of honest, generous and disinterested man, ended by a regrettable failure. He built the largest refractor ever made, for the Paris Great Exhibition of 1900. The lenses of 49 inches (132 cm) of diameter were assembled at the end of a horizontal, long tube of more than 195 feet (62m) connected to a large siderostat. However, this realization turned out to be a financial disaster that ruined the manufacturer, because it failed to run. After several adjustments, the instrument could have played an important role in research, but it was unfortunately dismounted and its components were sold.