HAUTE-FEUILLE, JOHN

HAUTE-FEUILLE, JOHN, an ingenious mechanic, was born at Orleans in 1647. Though he embraced the condition of ecclesiastic, and enjoyed several benefices, he applied almost his whole life to mechanics, in which he appears to have made great progress. He had a particular taste for clock-work, and made several discoveries in horology, which were of singular use. He claimed the discovery of moderating the vibration of the balance in watches by means of a small steel-spring, which has since been employed. He laid this discovery before the members of the Academy of Sciences in 1674; and the watches constructed on his principle are, by way of eminence, called pendulum-watches, not because they have real pendulums, but because they approach nearly to the justness of pendulums. Huygens perfected this happy invention; but the Abbé Haute-Feuille having declared himself the inventor, and obtained from Louis XIV. a patent for making watches with spiral springs, opposed the registering of this privilege, and published a pamphlet on the subject against Huygens. He wrote a great number of other pieces, most of which are small pamphlets, consisting of

a few pages, but very curious, as, 1. His Perpetual Pendulum, 4to; 2. New Inventions, 4to; 3. The Art of Breathing under Water, and the Means of Preserving a Flame shut up in a small Place; 4. Reflections on Machines for raising Water; 5. Opinion respecting the different Sentiments of Mallebranche and Regis, relating to the Appearance of the Moon when seen in the Horizon; 6. The Magnetic Balance; 7. A Placet to the King on the Longitude; 8. Letter on the Secret of the Longitude; 9. A New System on the Flux and Reflux of the Sea; 10. The Means of making Sensible Experiments that prove the Motion of the Earth; and many other pieces. He died in 1724.