Anatole Mallet

Jules Theodore Anatole Mallet (23 May 1837 – 10 October 1919) was a Swiss mechanical engineer, who was the inventor of the first successful compound system for a railway steam locomotive, patented in 1874. He is known for having invented three important forms of compound locomotive.

In 1876 he introduced a series of small two-cylinder compound 0-4-2T tank locomotives for the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz Railway in France.

He subsequently designed an articulated compound system with a rigid chassis at the rear carrying two high-pressure cylinders, and two low-pressure ones mounted on a swivelling front truck. This was patented in 1884 This was first used for a series of narrow gauge locomotives specially built by the Decauville Company in 1888 for the Paris Exposition of 1889.