Alphonse Sagebien

Alphonse Eléonor Sagebien (1807-1892) was a French

hydrological Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and environmental watershed sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is calle ...

engineer born in

Amiens Amiens (English: or ; ; pcd, Anmien, or ) is a city and commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in the region of Hauts-de-France. In 2021, the population of ...

and the inventor of the Sagebien wheel - a device that made hydraulically powered systems much more efficient in extracting energy from moving water. Sagebien graduated in 1833 with a degree in engineering from the prestigious

École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

and worked primarily in

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sci ...

. He discovered many of the mineral seams still worked today in the French department of

Pas-de-Calais Pas-de-Calais (, " strait of Calais"; pcd, Pas-Calés; also nl, Nauw van Kales) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments ...

. After 1848, he shifted to hydrological engineering, designing and patenting the wheel that bears his name. This invention was able to extract 50% more energy from flowing water than previous paddle-based systems and is still used today. Sagebien was also a municipal counsellor for Amiens from 1878 to 1888. French engineers École Centrale Paris alumni 1807 births 1892 deaths {{France-engineer-stub