THE PUBLIC FOUNTAINS OF THE CITY OF DIJON BY HENRY DARCY (1803-1858)

A full-length English translation of Darcy's 1856 book, published in 2004, makes it possible for geoscientists to experience Henry Darcy's activities and insights first-hand. The 506-page book describes not only the construction of Dijon's water supply system in 1840 but also Darcy's ideas on a wide range of water topics.

Darcy wrote the book to provide guidance for engineers in the construction of water supply systems. The 1855 experiments on the flow of water through sand were conducted after Darcy had retired on disability, after a long career that included being the head of water and street services in Paris, consulting work on Brussels' water supply, and travel to London to study macadam roads. The sand experiments resulted from Darcy's desire to make sand filters more efficient – not for the spring water that supplied Dijon – but for cities like London that used surface water.

As a young engineer assigned to his native city, Darcy immediately began his life's dream of providing abundant clean water to Dijon. The book describes his research into Dijon's 400-year history of surface and ground water projects. Darcy calculated the population's daily water needs (150 liters/person) and selected a spring to supply this amount of water to Dijon via a 12-km aqueduct. He built two reservoirs, 13 km of pipes, and 115 street fountains in the city (hence the name of the book). The fountains supplied free water for the inhabitants and water for flushing streets and fire fighting.

The English translation includes a 28-plate atlas that was originally published as a separate volume. The atlas contains Darcy's drawings of the components of the water supply system, his modifications to the Pitot tube for stream gauging, and the apparatus used for the sand experiments, among others.

The presentation will include biographical information about Darcy, plates from the atlas and photographs of the present-day remains of Darcy's water supply system.