Rev,
Had a power outage yesterday so could not do much. This morning I looked at that link, it is one fascinating book! I downloaded it in .pdf, spent far too long reading through bits of it and now will have to work late to catch up on my real work!
It is a collection of the proceedings of the Imperial Society of Agriculture, Industry, Sciences, Arts and Letters of the Loire Departement. It is a sort of Regional French version of the UK's Royal Society. Their meeting topics would appear to be at the leading edge of scientific thought of the 1860 period. Each of the branches had its own sub-committee or work group and all these came together monthly at general committee level to discuss the overall findings. The Industry Section covered guns, etc.
Page 94 (of the Annals, not .pdf file) details the Session of 7th May 1863, which among other topics, had: (my translation)
Manufacture of gun barrels – Mr. Ronchard-Siauve read a paper on the first part of a highly interesting study on this topic.
The reading of this work will be continued at the next session.
At the time of the reading, a pertinent discussion arose between several members on the relative merit of fusils a baguette (lit. rod rifles??) and Lefuacheux guns.
Mr. Rivolier held a strong view on the superiority of the latter gun, and he took it upon himself to bring to the next session a study on this topic which will be put on the Agenda.
On page 108 there is reference to the offer to Ronchard-Siauve of three papers dating from 1744 on the manufacture of guns for use in the preparation of his study/report...
On Page 18, in the list of members it shows Rivolier, Junior, Arms manufacturer, rue de l’Hopital 22. A few lines down one finds Ronchard-Siauve, Armourer- Barrel maker, Cours Fauriel.
It seems that there were two Rivoliers, one of which was Jean-Baptiste, another is described as Junior (fils) – I will see if I can clarify this later.
Have you any suggestions / links to a site for a good on-line dictionary on gunsmithing terms in French?
Thanks,
K.
