Jean Truchet (1657 – 5 February 1729), known as Father Sébastian, was a

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

Dominican priest born in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, who lived under the reign of

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

. He was active in areas such as

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

hydraulics Hydraulics () is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counterpart of pneumatics, which concer ...

graphics Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufa ...

, and

typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

. He is also known for many

inventions An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

Biography

Truchet was born in 1657, the son of a merchant father and a very pious mother. At age 16, he joined the

Discalced Carmelites The Discalced Carmelites, known officially as the Order of the Discalced Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel () or the Order of Discalced Carmelites (; abbreviation, abbrev.: OCD; sometimes called in earlier times, ), is a Catho ...

. He took the name Sébastien to honor his mother, who was named Sébastiane. In 1693, he was selected by Abbé Bignon to assist his commission investigating the feasibility of compiling a description of all France's artistic and industrial processes for the minister Colbert. For his assistance, he was named an ' of the French Royal Academy in 1699.

Death

Truchet died on 5 February 1729, with the '' Descriptions of the Arts and Trades'' still incomplete.

Contributions

Alongside the royal

typographer Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

Jacques Jaugeon, Truchet studied the proportions of

typefaces A typeface (or font family) is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, bold), slope (e.g., italic), width ...

using the

French line French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), a ...

(

French inch The traditional French units of measurement prior to metrication were established under Charlemagne during the Carolingian Renaissance. Based on contemporary Byzantine and ancient Roman measures, the system established some consistency across ...

), a measurement derived from

silversmith A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exact synonyms, as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are (or were, at least) largely the same but differed in that t ...

ing. The commission then invented the first typographic point, using minute fractions of the line to create a

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

that could be used to mathematically describe and

italicize In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...

metal type. Their system had unnecessarily great

precision Precision, precise or precisely may refer to: Arts and media * ''Precision'' (march), the official marching music of the Royal Military College of Canada * "Precision" (song), by Big Sean * ''Precisely'' (sketch), a dramatic sketch by the Eng ...

relative to the accuracy with which fonts could actually be cut. Further, it did not match the sizes of the fonts then in use. Fournier subsequently corrected these failings, using a larger point with greater compatibility with existing forms of type. Romain du Roi

The commission also designed the ' ("King's Roman"), which influenced Philippe Grandjean and through him the popular

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned for use by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers. The typeface was conceived by Stanl ...

fonts. Other typographic innovations in the work of the commission involved the use of both

and

vector Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

representations of letter shapes, tabulations of font metrics, and

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

font faces. In 1699, at the second public meeting of the French Academy, Truchet spoke on the motion of falling bodies, and nearly 20 years later he was one of several scientists to confirm Newton's model of the separation of white light into colors. As a

expert, he designed most of the French canals. Inspired by decorations he had seen on the canals, Truchet studied decorative patterns on ceramic tiles. One particular pattern that he studied involved square tiles split by a diagonal line into two triangles, decorated in contrasting colors. By placing these tiles in different orientations with respect to each other, as part of a

square tiling In geometry, the square tiling, square tessellation or square grid is a regular tiling of the Euclidean plane consisting of four squares around every vertex. John Horton Conway called it a quadrille. Structure and properties The square tili ...

, Truchet observed that many different patterns could be formed. This model of pattern formation was later taken up by Fournier, and is now known to

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

s and designers as Truchet tiling. He is also known for his expertise as a

watchmaker A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since a majority of watches are now factory-made, most modern watchmakers only repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their par ...

,. Translated by Béatrice Kincead. and for his inventions concerning

sundial A sundial is a horology, horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the position of the Sun, apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the ...

weapon A weapon, arm, or armament is any implement or device that is used to deter, threaten, inflict physical damage, harm, or kill. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime (e.g., murder), law ...

s and tools for

transplanting In agriculture and gardening, transplanting or replanting is the technique of moving a plant from one location to another. Most often this takes the form of starting a plant from seed in optimal conditions, such as in a greenhouse or protected n ...

large trees within the

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...

gardens.

Notes

External links

* Sébastien Truchet biography: https://jacques-andre.fr/faqtypo/truchet/index.html * Deepening on " Roman Du Roi" font: http://ilovetypography.com/2008/01/17/type-terms-transitional-type/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Truchet, Sebastien French designers French typographers and type designers Clergy from Lyon 1657 births 1729 deaths French Dominicans 17th-century French mathematicians 18th-century French mathematicians Date of birth unknown

Biography

Death

Contributions

See also

Notes

External links