Jean-Augustin-Alexis Sauvage

All the Paris newspapers have recently paid, for compensation for oblivion and the misfortunes of his life, a fair tribute of praise to the memory of Frederic Sauvage, inventor of the propeller. (See issue 753 of l’Illustration).
Today we have to add to the martyrology of inventors the name of Jean-Augustin-Alexis Sauvage, another engineer-inventor-mechanic, who just died in Passy. Would it then be true, as it has been said, that every man of genius is doomed to a life of misery and suffering? The sorrows and hardships that Frederic and Alexis Sauvage have had to endure give their lives a perfect similarity.
Here we’ll make a rough sketch of the life of the latter, that is to say of his work and of his misfortune.
He was born in 1781 near Paris, of mere workers. He spent the first years of his life in Bellevue, near Meudon, where he learned mechanics in the workshop-laboratory of the famous Gamin, locksmith, who had the honor to give lessons to King Louis XVI.
Alexis Sauvage worked a few years as a mechanic in the workshops of the government, and soon afterwards at Mr. Albony’s, who made him his foreman.
It was under the auspices of his boss that in 1816 he made contact with Windsor, who came to France at that time to set up gas lighting, a French invention coming back home from England. He became friend with Windsor who acted as his patron, but who unfortunately died too soon, in 1828.
It was Alexis Sauvage who, from 1816 to 1820, successively set up the Panoramas and Luxembourg gasworks. After these first tests, The government took the new discovery under its protection, to use it on a large scale. The Compagnie Royale d’éclairage au Gaz was founded in 1822, under the patronage of the king and with the assistance of MM. Vicomte Chaptal, de Bourienne, Dosne and Minguez. Sauvage was responsible for the implementation and the supervision of any work the Compagnie would undertake in Paris, and he was appointed head of the lighting of Paris and of the royal theaters. It is in this position that for ten years, from 1820 to 1830, he rendered the greatest services to the new gas industry.
 
Extract from L’Illustration, N° 769 on 21 November 1857.