Agustín de Betancourt

Agustín de Betancourt

Agustín de Betancourt y Molina (also recorded as Bethencourt; Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, February 1, 1758 – Saint Petersburg, July 14, 1824) was a Spanish civil and military engineer, architect, essayist, and precursor of radio, telegraphy and thermodynamics. He was an afrancesado who worked for the Kingdom of Spain and the Russian Empire.

His work ranged from steam engines and hot-air balloons to structural engineering and urban planning. Betancourt founded and directed the School of Engineers of Roads and Canals in 1802, today's Higher Technical School of Civil Engineers of Roads, Canals and Ports, and was appointed inspector of the Institute of the Corps of Communications Engineers in Saint Petersburg. As an architect he supervised the urban plans and construction in Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt, Nizhny Novgorod and other Russian cities, and he was also an organizer of the transport system of the Russian Empire.

He was a polyglot: he spoke Spanish, Latin, French, Russian, German and English.

Biography

He was born on February 1, 1758, in Puerto de la Cruz, in the Canary Islands. His full name was Agustín José Pedro del Carmen Domingo de Candelaria de Betancourt y Molina. His father, Agustín de Betancourt y Castro, holder of the family entail (mayorazgo), knight of the Order of Calatrava and Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Armies, had married in 1755 in La Orotava Leonor de Molina y Briones, daughter of the Marquesses of Villafuerte, born in Garachico. His great-grandfather was Marcos Francisco de Bethencourt y Castro, Governor and Captain General of Venezuela, born in Icod de los Vinos. His family is related to Jean IV de Béthencourt, who took part in the conquest of the Canary Islands and for this obtained the title of Lord of the Canary Islands. His father was trained in the business of textile machinery and was a regular participant in the Tertulia de Nava and a founding member of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Tenerife in La Laguna.

It was precisely at the newly created Society that in 1778 he presented his first design, an epicylindrical machine for spinning silk, made in collaboration with his father Agustín de Betancourt y Castro and his sister María de Betancourt y Molina, from whom the idea seems to have come. María de Betancourt would also present to the Economic Society of La Laguna a Memoir on the way of obtaining the color crimson, very probably the first scientific memoir signed by a woman in the Canary Islands.

With this invention he made himself known, and that same year the enlightened government of Charles III granted him a stipend to further his studies in the capital of the Kingdom, Madrid. He entered the Royal Studies of San Isidro and the Royal Academy of San Fernando. His first commissions for the Count of Floridablanca in 1783 were the inspection of the Imperial Canal of Aragon and the study of the mines of Almadén, on whose condition he wrote three detailed memoirs; in that same year, before the Royal Court, he flew, for the first time in Spain, a hot-air balloon at the country house of the Infante Don Gabriel. The King himself attended, along with the Infantes, Grandees of Spain, ministers and other personalities. The balloon was approximately two meters in diameter and was made of varnished taffeta.

In 1784 he traveled to Paris to the prestigious École nationale des ponts et chaussées (National School of Bridges and Roads). From 1785 onward he carried out numerous technical investigations (Memoir on the purification of stone coal, etc.) and began studies on hydraulics and mechanics, as well as designing and acquiring machines on commission from Floridablanca with a view to the future creation in Madrid of a Royal Cabinet of Machines.

Agustín de Betancourt, together with other distinguished figures, promoted the founding in 1802 of the first School of Roads in Spain, in Madrid, to train specialists in civil engineering.

Travels to France and England

In the autumn of 1788 he made his first trip to England, where he spent two months observing machines, halfway between scientific research and industrial espionage. Among other places, he visited the firm of Matthew Boulton and James Watt, who in 1789 had patented the double-acting steam engine, but he did not manage to see the new improved engine they were working on. However, in London he observed a double-acting engine operating in a flour mill and a new model of power loom (probably that of Cartwright). On his return to Paris, in 1792 he wrote for the Paris Academy of Sciences a Memoir on a double-acting steam engine and, at the same time, designed a pump that was installed in the Perier brothers' newly built flour mill. Shortly afterward, he designed a model of a power loom.

That same year he built a wind-powered machine to drain marshland, which he added, along with the loom, to the collection of machines destined for the future Cabinet. He was also in charge of designing or acquiring the instruments for the Malaspina expedition. In 1795 he presented to the Paris Academy of Sciences the Memoir on the expansive force of water vapor (it may be no coincidence that at around the same time Watt wrote to Boulton advising him to distrust foreign visitors). The following year, 1797, he wrote his study on the method of casting and boring iron cannons (the Description of the Royal establishment of Madrid where iron cannons are cast and bored for the French Royal Navy, in which he proposed various improvements to the methods employed) and the Memoir on the mechanical dredge, whose construction he attempted to carry out in Spain, though without success, and which he finally built in Kronstadt in 1812. When war was declared between England and Spain, he returned to Madrid with the collection of machines, at the same time as other stipendiaries such as Claudio Boutelou.

Statue of Betancourt in Puerto de la Cruz.

In 1792 the Royal Cabinet of Machines was inaugurated, of which he was appointed director, and the first Catalog of models, plans and manuscripts of the Cabinet was made public, which included 270 machines, 358 plans and more than 100 memoirs with 92 drawings, all of which he had collected or designed during his stay in Paris, in collaboration with Juan López Peñalver. In 1793 he traveled to England, where he remained for three years researching theories of machines and where in 1795 he presented the design of a machine for cutting weeds in rivers and canals. In 1796, following the breakdown of relations between Spain and England as a consequence of the signing of the Treaty of San Ildefonso between France and Spain, he moved to Paris. There, together with Breguet, he presented to the Directory the prototype and plans of an optical telegraph (the Memoir on a new telegraph and some ideas on the telegraphic language), on which they had been working since 1787, and the controversy began with Claude Chappe over the advantages and drawbacks of the Breguet and Betancourt telegraph, a controversy that would not be resolved until the definitive favorable report of the Academy of Sciences in 1796. In 1797 he patented together with Perier a hydraulic press for industrial use and added it to the Cabinet of Machines (as in the case of the double-acting engine and the power loom, this press was very similar to another one invented by Joseph Bramah that Betancourt had seen in England).

Russian commemorative coin.

That same year he returned to Spain, where he was appointed Inspector General of Ports and Roads.

In 1798 he was entrusted with the installation of an optical telegraph between Madrid and Cádiz and with the organization in Spain of a corps of railway engineers. A year later he inaugurated the first Spanish optical telegraph line, between Madrid and Aranjuez, although he planned to extend it to Cádiz; the Madrid–Aranjuez line consisted of four telegraph stations: Buen Retiro Palace, the hermitage of Los Ángeles (Getafe), the Espartinas hill (Valdemoro) and Monte Parnaso in Aranjuez. There are several written testimonies from the period about these optical telegraphs, of which no other traces remain (Salvá, Bourgoing, Pictet-Mallet, Moratín, Wilhelm von Humboldt...). In Aranjuez two important testimonies about Monte Parnaso are preserved (by Juan Antonio Álvarez de Quindós, in 1804, and by Cándido López y Malta, in 1869).

In 1800 he was appointed Inspector General of the corps of railway engineers and a member of the board of financial administration, and in 1803 he became Intendant of the armies and principal director of the posts.

In 1802, after the failure of the Puentes Reservoir (Lorca, Murcia), which caused the deaths of 608 people or more, he secured the creation of the Official School of the Corps of Road Engineers, of which he was the first director.

In 1807 Betancourt was appointed corresponding member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Shortly afterward, owing to the unrest and the state of uncertainty caused by the invasion of Spain by the French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte, which would give rise to the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain, he left the country for good, never to return. He moved to Paris, where he presented to the Academy of Sciences his Memoir on a new system of inland navigation, in which he described a plunger lock he had invented in 1801, and with Breguet he invented the metallic thermometer.

Russian period and final years

Portrait of Betancourt included in the edition by Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov (volume 4).

At the end of 1807 he traveled to Saint Petersburg at the invitation of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and remained there for six months until 1808, when he returned to Paris. There, together with the afrancesado engineer José Lanz, he presented the work Essay on the composition of machines (published under the title Essai sur la composition des machines), which they had been writing since 1803. It became a widely circulated textbook throughout Europe. He then went back to Russia, where he would remain until his death in the service of Tsar Alexander I.

Tomb of Agustín de Betancourt in the Lazarevskoe Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg.

Appointed marshal of the Imperial Russian Army, he was attached to the Advisory Council of the Department of Communication Routes. He was later appointed inspector of the Institute of the Corps of Engineers and, in 1819, director of the Department of Communication Routes.

Over the sixteen years of his stay in Russia he combined the academic direction of the Institute of Engineers with numerous public works, such as the bridge over the Malaya Nevka, the modernization of the arms factory of Tula and the cannon foundry of Kazan, the dredge of Kronstadt, the scaffolding for Saint Isaac's Cathedral and the Column of Alexander I, the Betancourt canal in Saint Petersburg, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Nizhny Novgorod, the paper money factory, the Moscow riding hall, steam navigation on the Volga river, water supply systems, railways, etc.

From 1822 onward he began to have problems with the Tsar and was replaced in the direction of the Institute, remaining sidelined until his death in Saint Petersburg on July 14, 1824, in whose cemetery he was buried near the tomb of the celebrated mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783).

Family

Around 1790 he married the Englishwoman Ana Jourdan, with whom he had three daughters and a son. In 1859, two were still living: Alfonso de Béthencourt Jourdan, an officer of the Russian Imperial Guard, and Ana de Béthencourt Jourdan, a Parisian and married; already deceased were his daughter Mathilde de Béthencourt, also a Parisian, wife of the Count of Gardane, and his daughter Carolina d'Espejo, who died in 1823 and next to whose tomb Betancourt was buried. He was the uncle of Agustín de Monteverde y Betancourt, Governor of Nikolaev in Ukraine, and of his brother Manuel Monteverde Bethencourt.

Honors

On October 9, 1978, the Russian astronomer Tamara Smirnova discovered the asteroid (11446) and named it Betankur.

At the Elder Museum in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria visitors can see a permanent exhibition of some models of his inventions, as well as two optical telegraphs that can be used for demonstrations.

2008 Russian commemorative stamp in honor of Betancourt.

In 2008 a commemorative stamp was issued in Russia celebrating the 250th anniversary of his birth.

The Russian Ministry of Communication Routes created the Betancourt commemorative medal, which was awarded to King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

On May 13, 2018, the bridge named Agustín de Betancourt was inaugurated in Saint Petersburg.

In February 2018, the City Council of Puerto de la Cruz named him a favorite son. Later, in October of that same year, the Cabildo of Tenerife granted Betancourt the title of illustrious son of Tenerife.

See also

• Moscow riding hall
• León Gil de Palacio

Bibliography

• Betencourt y Molina, Agustín de (1819). Description de la Salle d'Exercice de Moscou (in français). Saint Petersburg: L'imprimerie de P. P. Alexandre Pluchart.
• Betencourt y Molina, Agustín de; Prieto Pérez, José Luis; comp. (2003). Memoria sobre un nuevo sistema de navegación interior: noticias biográficas de Don Agustín de Bethencourt y Molina (in español). Fundación Canaria Orotava de Historia de la Ciencia. ISBN 978-84-607-7867-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• García-Pereda, Ignacio (2013). "Los jardines y la agricultura de Inglaterra. Tres pensionados españoles en la década de 1790". Bouteloua, XV (in español).
• Lanz, José María de; Betencourt y Molina, Agustín de (1808). Essai sur la composition des machines. Par MM. Lanz et Bétancourt (in français). Paris: L'imprimerie Impériale.

• Miguel Adán Oliver, Lanz y Betancourt,ciencia y exilio, Ciudad Real, in El General no importa, Ediciones Sta.Mª de Alarcos, 2008. https://iesstamariadealarcos.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/nucc81m-4-el-general-no-importa.pdf

• Padrón Acosta, Sebastián (1958). El ingeniero Agustín de Béthencourt y Molina (in español). San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife): Instituto de Estudios Canarios.
• Sánchez Ruiz, Carlos, La telegrafía óptica en Aranjuez, Ayuntamiento de Aranjuez. Delegación de Cultura. Colección Aranjuez. Studia nº 9, Aranjuez, 2008.

External links

• Betancourt Project (Canary Orotava Foundation for the History of Science)
• Website of the Agustín de Betancourt Foundation
• Summary of the documentary Agustín de Betancourt y Molina
• Agustín de Betancourt Digital Library at CEHOPU
• Máquinas mil: Agustín de Betancourt: ingeniero, científico, artista (Website of the exhibition held at the University of La Laguna)