Fontaine, Hippolyte

▪ French engineer

born 1833, Dijon, Fr.

died 1917, Paris

      French engineer who discovered that a dynamo (electric generator) can be operated in reverse as an electric motor; (electric motor) he was also the first to transmit electric energy (1873).

      After completing his education at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers at Châlons-sur-Marne, he travelled around France making models of new inventions. He then became an industrial designer and by 1857 had become chief of design in a factory. During the Franco-German War of 1870–71, he organized the manufacture of cannons. After discovering the reversibility of the dynamo, he constructed an electric motor based on that principle, then used the motor in the first transmission of electricity at Vienne in 1873. While serving as president of the Société Internationale des Électriciens, he founded the Revue Industrielle, a learned journal.

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