HYGROMÈTRE À CHEVEUX

HAIR HYGROMETER
according to Saussure's principle, in gilded copper.
Signed Dumotiez in Paris.
Louis XVI period.
Height: 32 cm - Width: 9.9 cm
(Oxidation, small deformation)

This rare device is used with a real hair.
hair. Hair used to form hygrometers
hygrometers must be fine, soft and uncreased,
but color is irrelevant|
However, Saussure had a slight preference
preference for blond hair, because in his opinion
more successful than black hair. The essential
is essential: "the hair must have been cut
cut from a living, healthy head, because those
that fall out of their own accord, or that are cut off
after long illnesses, are subject to a
vice". Louis Joseph Dumotiez (1757 - ?) and his brother
brother Pierre François, both "engineers of the
of the Royal Academy of Sciences", founded a
a workshop in Paris around 1780, which quickly gained
international reputation. Their nephew Nicolas
Constant Pixii-Dumotiez (1776 - 1861) took over
this workshop.