Claude Ruggieri

Claude Ruggieri (1777 – 30 August 1841) was a pyrotechnician in Paris, France, who developed and wrote about innovations in fireworks design. He and others in his family were renowned and patronized by royalty for their creation of great fireworks extravaganzas. They also opened a public pleasure garden where fireworks displays could be enjoyed by the people of Paris. He emphasized the importance of chemistry as a form of theoretical knowledge and connected it to the artisanal practices of pyrotechnics. Ruggieri is credited with being the first person to use rockets to transport living passengers aloft. His passengers were mostly mice and rats, but also sheep. He used parachutes to return them safely to the earth.

In August 1764, Giovani Battista Torre ( Jean-Baptiste Torré) established a pleasure garden on the boulevard Saint-Martin in Paris. It was known as the Waux-hall de Torré, or Waux-hall d'été, after Vauxhall Gardens in London. Torré held public fireworks displays that included artificial volcanoes. In 1766, Claude-Fortuné's son, Désiré-François Ruggieri (1818–1885) became the head of the family business in France, acting as a pyrotechnician for Napoleon III. The Ruggieri family business is still in operation in France.

Work

Fireworks On 30 May 1770, a display planned by Petronio Ruggieri to celebrate the marriage of the future Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette ended in a disastrous accident. In response, the City of Paris slashed its budget for fireworks, cutting off the Ruggieri family's main source of income. and emphasized the importance of chemistry as a theoretical basis for creating colored fireworks: In 1804, after hearing a first-person account of Russian green fire, Claude Ruggieri began to experiment with the addition of metallic salts to create colored flames.

Ruggieri claimed to first use green fire publicly in June 1810, as part of a fireworks display for the marriage of Napoleon I and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma. was dedicated to Jean-Antoine Chaptal, the author of Elémens De Chimie, and a minister in Napoleon's government. In this way, Ruggieri aligned himself with a post-revolutionary view of science. Chaptal was a proponent of a "new man" who connected theoretical knowledge and artisanal skills.

Balloons, rockets and parachutes Claude Ruggieri was a friend of André-Jacques Garnerin, As a result, Ruggieri is credited with being the first person to use rockets to carry living creatures.

In 1830, Ruggieri announced that he would use a large cluster of rockets to lift a larger animal, a ram, into the air. A young man (perhaps as young as 11) apparently offered to replace the ram as a passenger in the test. Plans were made for him to ascend from the Champ de Mars. However, French authorities intervened and canceled the flight, apparently due to the volunteer's youth. whom he had married in 1819.

Publications Editions appeared in 1801, 1811, and 1821.