Maker

lantern. Even if the lamp broke in a flammable atmosphere, no accident would result. It was used for firefighting in Paris and New York, in mining, and for finding gas leaks.

STAGECRAFT TO AIRCRAFT: A living chandelier of dancers adorned in Trouvé’s electrically lighted jewelry for The Chicken That Laid the Golden Eggs, performed in Paris and Berlin; electro-mobile jewelry by Trouvé included a drumming rabbit, flapping bird, and chattering skull; Trouvé’s second “mechanical bird” ornithopter, driven by gunpowder.

Did you ever invent just for fun?

Of all things, I became an international sensation as a jewelry maker and theatrical designer.

I started making electro-mobile jewelry in 1865 — rabbits drumming, birds and butterflies flapping, decapitated heads talking, a grenadier playing a drum. Everyone wanted them! Mounted on gold or on tiepins, the minuscule creatures were animated with the aid of an invisible wire attached to a cigar-sized, sealed battery hidden in a waistcoat pocket. Très amusant!

After the military events of 1870, I made electrically illuminated crystal jewelry in myriad colors and shapes. It, too, was all the rage, but nothing compared to the audience and media acclaim when I incorporated lighted crystals in dance, theater, and opera costumes and props.

Neither language nor images can sufficiently convey the effect on the major stages of Paris, London, Berlin, and beyond. For the time, it was

the most considerable application of electrical illumination directly from batteries. Imagine a ballet of illuminated amazons, a bejeweled chandelier of sparkling dancers, Neptune’s chariot aglow, and the duel in Faust with lighted swords flashing on a darkened stage. Quel plaisir!

Given the many inventions I exhibited at major expositions, it seems fitting that my last spectacle on the international stage appeared in 1889 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. My enormous lighted fountain, which I would patent in 1893, was a sensation at the end of a transformational century.

With hope that in some small way I lit their paths or electrified their imaginations, I salute all inventors and makers who succeeded me.

Au revoir et bonne chance!

Karen Hansen makes classical music, stories, and photographs in Minneapolis and on her travels throughout Europe, Asia, and America. She interviews artists, entrepreneurs, gardeners, judges, professors, and makers.

36 Make: Volume 17