POIRÉE

FRANCE (see also List of Individuals)

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11.11.1785 Soissons/F - 30.3.1873 Paris/F

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Charles Poirée started his engineering career with bridge structures over the Arno River in Tuscany, and the Duoro River in Portugal. The year 1814 brought him back to France where political changes followed after the fall of Napoleon. Poirée moved to Tonnerre in Burgundy to realize the gate of Tanlay-Aisy for Canal de Bourgogne. Later, he contributed significantly to Canal du Nivernais connecting the Burgundy Canal with the Loire River. As for Canal de Bourgogne, Poirée proposed a tunnel at the top of the route, yet ran into large structural difficulties which he solved by adopting an open sky site.

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Poirée's name has remained famous for his invention of mobile barrages. These were introduced at the sluices of Yonne in 1834 for two reasons. First, the river passing close to the canal thus had no backwater effect on the upstream canal site, neither during low flows nor during flood season, because the canal water level was artificially controlled with the gates, and second the Canal water depth could be adapted to the needs of river navigation. "Poirée gates" are composed of metallic beams parallel to the flow direction and fixed to the river bottom. They can be lowered to the channel bottom by specially provided holes. Water bodies of several tens of meters can be closed by these early hydraulic structures. Their economic and simple design was rewarded with a number of awards during the Universal Expositions in 1837 and 1855. Mobile barrages designed by Poirée were considered an important advance for fluvial navigation, for waterborne industries, for irrigation and for port flushing. As a responsible engineer for Seine River from 1837, Poirée developed this design at Marly, where the famous Marly pumping machine to Versailles had been erected 150 years earlier.

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_{Alphandéry, M.-F. (1962). Poirée. Dictionnaire des inventeurs français: 283.Seghers: Paris. Coronio, G. (1997). Charles Poirée. 250 ans de l'Ecole des Ponts en cent portraits: 87-88. Presses de l'Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées: Paris. P}

_{Poirée, C. (1834). Description et détail estimatif des portes en métal d'une écluse de 2 m de chute. Annales des Ponts et Chaussées 4(2): 147-156.}

_{Poirée, C. (1873). Sur le nivellement du zéro des échelles indiquant les hauteurs de la Seine. Comtes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris 96(2): 119-120.}

_{Service Documentaire (2003). Charles Poirée. Personal communication. ENPC: Paris. Talansier, C. (1888). La canalisation des fleuves. Le Génie Civil 14(3): 33-38.}

_{Thénard, M., Vauthier, P., Poirée, C., Cavenne, F.A. (1841). Barrages fixes à hausses mobiles exécutés sur la rivière de l'Isle. Annales des Ponts et Chaussées 11(2): 45-75.}