Rennequin Sualem (1645 − 1708) was a Walloon carpenter and engineer born on 29 January 1645 in Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, in what now is Wallonia,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. His given name sometimes appears as 'Renkin'. Portrait Renkin Sualem par Lebrun

Achievements

In 1667−68 the lieutenant-governor of the castle of

Huy Huy ( or ; nl, Hoei, ; wa, Hu) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. Huy lies along the river Meuse, at the mouth of the small river Hoyoux. It is in the ''sillon industriel'', the former industrial ...

ordered the building of an hydraulic machine to pump up the water of the

Hoyoux The Hoyoux () is a river of Belgium, a right tributary of the Meuse. It flows for through the province of Liège in the northern-central part of the country. It flows into the Meuse in Huy Huy ( or ; nl, Hoei, ; wa, Hu) is a city and muni ...

river to his castle in

Modave Modave (; wa, Modåve) is a municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. On January 1, 2006, Modave had a total population of 3,722. The total area is 40.37 km² which gives a population density of 92 inhabitants pe ...

, higher. Rennequin Sualem was commissioned to build the mechanism. In 1678 the French king

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...

called for a competition to construct an effective pump system to bring water from the nearby Seine river to his chateaux at

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, ...

and Marly in order to supply the fountains there, and Sualem resolved to present his model, a scaled-up version of his pump system at Hoyoux. The presentations by the other inventors were so unconvincing that the king had decided to discontinue the competition and was about to leave the room, but Sualem managed to persuade him to stay to hear his plan. When he presented his imposing wooden model he impressed the king with his detailed description of its operation, and convinced that Sualem understood the problem to be tackled, Louis XIV commissioned him to immediately begin construction. The resulting huge

Machine de Marly The Machine de Marly, also known as the Marly Machine or the Machine of Marly, was a large hydraulic system in Yvelines, France, built in 1684 to pump water from the river Seine and deliver it to the Palace of Versailles.Thompson 2006, p. 251 ...

, engineered by Arnold de Ville, lifted the waters from the Seine to the Versailles palace, in this case higher. The machine included 14 paddlewheels to power over 200 pumps that forced water up a network of pipes to an aqueduct. It took 30 years to complete in 1684 and remained in use until 1817 before subsequent modification.Profil de la Machine de Marly (An annotated image of the Marly machine)
/ref> Rennequin also built a pump for a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

Decize Decize is a commune in the Nièvre department in central France. Geography The town is situated on a former island in the Loire ("en Loire assise") at the confluence of the Aron river. The right channel of the Loire was dammed up to reclaim land ...

. He died in

Bougival Bougival () is a suburban commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located west from the centre of Paris, on the left bank of the River Seine, on the departmental border with Hauts-de-Seine. ...

, France in 1708, at the Marly machine.

Homage

*Quai Rennequin Sualem in Bougival *Rue Renkin in Brussels *Rue Rennequin in Paris *Rue Rennequin Sualem in Liège *Haute École Rennequin Sualem in Liège

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sualem, Rennequin Hydraulic engineers Walloon people 1645 births 1708 deaths