René Baillaud
French astronomer who invented a parabolic sound detector.
René Baillaud, a French astronomer born in Toulouse, lived from 1885 to 1977. He created a paraboloid device that captured incoming aircraft sounds and reflected them to listeners, a method used for detection before radar existed.
Quick Facts
- Born
- 10 November 1885
- Died
- 2 July 1977
- Birthplace
- Toulouse
- Occupation
- Astronomer
- Notable invention
- Paraboloid device for detecting aircraft sounds
- Father
- Benjamin Baillaud
- Siblings
- Jules Baillaud, Émile Baillaud
Facts from the source article.
Biography
Before the First World War, René Baillaud worked at the Nice and Marseille observatories, also teaching at Marseille’s engineering school. During the war, General Ferrié recruited him—alongside future Nobelist Jean Perrin—to develop France’s acoustic defense. After the war, he became a professor at the University of Besançon and director of its observatory until 1957. There, he installed a special clock five meters beneath the library in a temperature-controlled room, which let the observatory join a global time network.
Works
The paraboloid instrument allowed the position of planes to be established using only sound, without visual contact. The first prototype was made of wood and measured 60 cm in diameter. Its precision led to use by the French military during the First World War to repel night attacks from German bombers by pointing searchlights at them, representing a rare technological superiority for France. After this start in acoustics, Baillaud abandoned the field because his professor's own instrument was not chosen by the French military, and he feared no academic future in it. He then turned to chronometry, becoming a founding member of the French society of chronometry and its first chief of staff, creating in 1931 the journal Annales Françaises de Chronométrie. To join the Carte du Ciel project directed by his brother, he oversaw installation of an astrographe triple. He published his autobiography Souvenirs d'un jeune Toulousain (1885) and Souvenirs: parents et amis de Toulouse et de l'Aveyron, d'un siecle a l'autre (1976); the first served as an account of the development of French acoustic defense.
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