Science Fit for a King to His Displayed Medical Certificate

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HISTORY his vaccine, thousands of people, including Louis XVI himself, benefited from a crude form of inoculation against smallpox — the disease that had killed Louis XV, according Science fit for a king to his displayed medical certificate. Science was also entertainment at Ver- Laura Spinney visits a Versailles exhibition of curiosities. sailles: demonstrations drew large crowds. In 1746, in the Hall of Mirrors, eyewitnesses described how Abbot Nollet literally shocked n 1769, King Louis XV of France was out the gardens (the Science and 140 hand-holding aristocrats with static elec- given a male rhinoceros for the royal instruments they Curiosities at the tricity. Full-sized battleships were floated on menagerie at Versailles, where it caused a used are on display), Court of Versailles the royal lakes, and in 1783, brothers Joseph The Palace of Isensation. The animal remained there for 22 hydraulics experts and Etienne Montgolfier demonstrated their Versailles, France. years, until it was killed by a sabre thrust dur- pondered diverting Until 27 February hot-air balloon in a palace courtyard. ing the French Revolution. Its skin was later the River Eure to fill 2011. Royal women also played a part in the stretched over an oak frame and displayed the lakes — a project scientific adventure. One of Louis XV’s at the Natural History Museum in Paris. For that was never completed — and explorers mistresses, Madame de Pompadour, sup- the next few months it is back at Versailles, filled greenhouses and the menagerie with ported the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot welcoming visitors to the exhibition Science exotic species. The forerunner of the lift, and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, a volume of and Curiosities at the Court of Versailles. the flying chair, was invented at Versailles to radical Enlightenment thinking that was The rhino embodies the exhibition’s two transport Louis XV’s mistresses upstairs; a banned by the French government. Visitors main themes: science as spectacle, and full-size mock-up is shown. can see Marie-Antoinette’s dulcimer player, science in the service of the state. King Louis It wasn’t all self-serving. Under Louis XIV, a primitive robot that hammers out tunes on XIV ushered in an era of frenetic scientific Cassini charted the Moon’s terrain, and Louis a stringed instrument. The queen bought it activity after his chief minister, Jean-Baptiste XV paid the Cassini family to create the first in 1784 and, realizing its scientific value, Colbert, persuaded him to establish a national map of France, parts of which are on show, donated it to the academy a year later. academy of science in 1666 — as depicted in revealing detail down to the most isolated Marie-Antoinette, the rhino and the a 1680 painting by Henri Testelin (pictured). windmill. Louis XV also had a passion for academy all met their ends in 1793 at the Louis XIV imposed no rules on his academi- scientific instruments, such as an astronomi- height of the Revolution. But the academy cians, but he did pay them, so their projects cal clock showing the Moon’s phases and proved thicker-skinned than the queen and had to be useful to him. Being invited to movements of the planets around the Sun the ungulate. Realizing that they needed demonstrate your discovery or invention at according to Nicolaus Copernicus. scientists after all, the revolutionaries court was the best way to get it known. Louis XVI encouraged agricultural recreated the academy in 1795 in its current Scientists came to Versailles from far research with the hope of eradicating famine form — as one of the five that make up the and wide to help create a splendid royal in France. He was rewarded in 1786 when Institut de France. ■ residence. They included astronomer Antoine-Augustin Parmentier presented him Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who directed with the flowers of the potato, or ‘poor bread’, Laura Spinney is a writer based in the Paris Observatory from its opening in whose cultivation he had been perfecting. Lausanne, Switzerland. 1671. Geometricians and astronomers laid Years before Edward Jenner came up with e-mail: [email protected] es, J.-M. Manaï J.-M. es, LL sai R e Ve e D âteau âteau cH

A 1680 painting by Henri Testelin celebrates the achievements of the French national academy of sciences during the reign of Louis XIV.