Jean-Victor Poncelet [SEP] educated at
Jean-Victor Poncelet
Jean-Victor Poncelet (1 July 1788 – 22 December 1867) was a French engineer and mathematician who served most notably as the Commanding General of the École Polytechnique. He is considered a reviver of projective geometry, and his work "Traité des propriétés projectives des figures" is considered the first definitive text on the subject since Gérard Desargues' work on it in the 17th century. He later wrote an introduction to it: "Applications d’analyse et de géométrie".
As a mathematician, his
Poncelet wheel
The Poncelet wheel is a type of waterwheel invented by Jean-Victor Poncelet while working at the École d'Application in Metz. It roughly doubled the efficiency of existing undershot waterwheels through a series of detail improvements. The first Poncelet wheel was constructed in 1838, and the design quickly became common in France. Although the design was a great improvement on existing designs, further improvements in turbine design rendered the Poncelet wheel obsolete by the mid-century.
Design.
Traditional undershot waterwheels consisted of a series of flat