Hi Awien, Can you help me with a little niggling doubt. I have just 'completed' an article about Les Frères Robert which involved lots of scrabbling for references via Google, but I am concerned that the younger brother, Marie-Noël Nicolas-Louis Robert (Robert le Jeune) has got too many names and identities. I am concerned that he may be two people, a flyer and a paper maker, but that would mean that both Larousse and Britannica are wrong, which is surely unthinkable. One source, Today in Science, describes a different person, a timid clerk called Louis who got ripped off, but it is so florid, waffly, badly translated and so focussed on the Fourdrinier machine rather than Louis, that I can't use it to contradict L & B.
Unfortunately English sources start with a disadvantage, he was one of a pair of brothers, an artesan, who had a christian name as a surname, who was half of a construction team, and half of a different flying team, in partnership with a professor who also had a christian name as a surname. Ergo La Charlière piloted by 'Charles Robert' seems perfectly feasible ... but wrong. Thus I took the liberty of agglomerating the names, Marie-Noël, Noël, Nicolas-Louis, and Louis in order to focus on the article build. Can you shed any light? Regards Chienlit (talk) 14:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
:Hi, Chienlit! I'll have a quick look and see what I can find out, but no promises - I can't devote too much time to it. Cheers, Awien (talk) 14:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
::OK, I'm back . . . and not much farther forward.
::The physicist in charge of the experiment (hydrogen balloon) was Jacques Charles, (per Petit Robert 2 and Petit Larousse illustré, recent paper editions). Neither dictionary has an entry for the frères Robert.
::The frères Robert who constructed the balloon are referred to as Anne-Jean and Nicolas-Louis in two trustworthy-looking on-line sources:
::http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/C930691/BALLONS.htm
::http://www.hydroretro.net/etudegh/les_apports_scientifiques_du_18e_siecle.pdf
::(the author of the latter asks to be asked and credited for any use made of the material).
::In both of these, Nicolas-Louis Robert is named as having made the flight with Jacques Charles.
::Other documents have Marie-Noël Robert as one of the brothers and/or the one who flew, for example this local history blog: http://beuvry.unblog.fr/2009/09/01/histoire-du-quartier-du-ballon-a-beuvry/
::Gotta go - maybe more later. Awien (talk) 16:16, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
:::Hi, Thanks, list so far...
- http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/C930691/BALLONS.htm Universalis .fr Ballons, Anne-Jean and Nicolas-Louis
- http://beuvry.unblog.fr/2009/09/01/histoire-du-quartier-du-ballon-a-beuvry/ History of Beuvry Anne-Jean Robert et Marie-Noël Robert
- http://www.hydroretro.net/etudegh/les_apports_scientifiques_du_18e_siecle.pdf Les apports scientifiques du XVIIIe siècle Par Gérard Hartmann - Anne-Jean et Nicolas-Louis Robert,
- http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/groupe-homonymes/Robert/141174 Larousse .fr Anne-Jean (1758-1820) et Nicolas Louis, (Paris 1761-Dreux 1828)
- https://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/Aircraft/Balloon-Charles.html Fidlers Green Marie-Noel Robert
- http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10447673 Anne-Jean and Marie-Noel Robert,
- http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/505373/Nicolas-Louis-Robert Britannica Nicolas-Louis Robert —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chienlit (talk • contribs) 18:10, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
:A couple more refs. The online Larousse has the Robert brothers as Anne-Jean and Nicolas Louis (called the younger Robert), with Nicolas Louis having made the flight with Charles. The 1976 paper Britannica also has "physicist J.-A.-C. Charles accompanied by Nicolas-Louis Robert" as having made the flight.
:So there's no doubt about Jacques Alexandre César Charles, physicist and principal investigator. It also looks to me virtually certain that the Robert brothers were Anne-Jean Robert and Nicolas-Louis Robert, and that it was Nicolas-Louis Robert who flew. The sites that talk about Marie-Noël Robert are on the face of it much less authoritative, so if it were me, I would relegate this name to a footnote at most, although ideally of course, someone would go and look at the dusty old papers somewhere. Hope this helps.
:In the meantime, in doing this research I made the interesting discovery that it was Jacques Charles' wife Julie who was the Julie Charles who inspired one of the most famous poems in French literature, Lamartine's Le Lac (that I had to memorise when I was at school). Live and learn! Ciao! Awien (talk) 18:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
::Thank you for your efforts, and I'm pleased to be of service... I both triggered your interest and twas I who added the stuff about Julie and de Lamartine to the Jacques Charles page. Like a treasure hunt or a masquerade. :) Regards Chienlit (talk) 19:37, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
:::Well done ye for adding the cultural reference - though I actually hadn't looked at the WP Charles article till now, I found out about Mme Charles being Elvire on one of the French sites. On the other hand, WP has just taught me a LOT about balloons and bicycles. Such a fun way of wasting time, n'est-ce pas? Awien (talk) 20:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
::::Many mercis
::::I will caveat the article and standardise on Nicolas-Louis. Larousse, Britannica and Awien are an awesome triumvirate. But, for my own interest, Could a humble artisan engineer have had four names? Could the change of emphasis be anything to do with the Revolution? or Is there one rogue source out there which the interweb has duplicated 'lapinesque'? Chienlit (talk) 09:07, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
::::(ps. You may be interested to glance at other dusty old French stuff that I have recently worked on are Hubert Latham, Ernest Archdeacon, Pierre Giffard and Le Vélo. As I never trust my French why should wiki? ... and where did Archdeacon come from? where did he go? I only found a few middle years. Don't feel obliged, I just grab at every passing straw when I am out of my depth. Regards. )
It was rien! And flattery will get you ev... I mean nowhere ^_-
As for a potential "Marie-Noel Nicolas-Louis Robert", I had a pretty good look via Google.fr and didn't find anything à propos. And although I don't have much of a feel for the naming conventions of the day, it certainly doesn't sound too plausible. I do indeed suspect lapinesque multiplication of an initial mistake, but it's also a very weird mistake if so. Filed in the back of my mind in case further info comes my way . . .
I glanced at a couple of the other articles this morning and saw no obvious problems. Au contraire, they looked interesting and well-written. Now I have a few minutes to myself, I'm off to read them properly. (Btw, long, long ago I once did a paper on the terminology of the early days of aviation (=behaving like a bird) in a French linguistics class - that was fun too). And DYK that on the White Cliffs of Dover you can see (or used to be able to) the exact spot where Blériot landed marked out in paving stones?
Bonsoir! Awien (talk) 20:55, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
: Done,
: I have renamed and caveated the article, it looks much better now that Nicolas-Louis Robert is primary, and I have 'damned with feint praise' those other sources for marie-noel.
: b But... I have also standardised Nicolas-Louis across Wiki. History of balloons etc.
: b b But.... Thanks for looking at the other articles. Giffard is not 'mine', I found it in a mess, added some details, was preparing a snippet/section on 'the world's first motor race', then got distracted to ballooning (can't remember why) and have not yet done the reorg it needs.
: b b b But... Yesterday I was emboldened by my new back-up team (Awien) to translate a bit of Diderot and Rousseau for my favourite French expression L'esprit de l'escalier. The translation is bad because it's bad, it's short because I couldn't understand the middle bit.
: b b b b But... Regards Chienlit (talk) 11:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
b b b b b But... I just couldn't get over the original niggling doubt about two people. Voila...