Auguste Rateau (13 October 1863 – 13 January 1930) was an

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

and industrialist born in

Royan Royan (; in the Saintongeais dialect; oc, Roian) is a commune and town in the south-west of France, in the department of Charente-Maritime in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Its inhabitants are known as ''Royannais'' and ''Royannaises''. Capi ...

, France, specializing in

turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...

Biography

After studies, first at the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

and then at the

École des Mines de Paris Mines Paris - PSL, officially École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris (until May 2022 Mines ParisTech, also known as École des mines de Paris, ENSMP, Mines de Paris, les Mines, or Paris School of Mines), is a French grande école and a c ...

, he began his career as a teacher at the École des Mines de Saint-Étienne from 1888 to 1897. He then embarked on an industrial career exploiting turbines. He manufactured fans for mines, blowers for steel mills, water pumps, and steam turbines for ships. To this end, he created a design office in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and, in 1903, the ''Société pour l’exploitation des appareils Rateau'', which moved in 1917 to

La Courneuve La Courneuve () is a commune in Seine-Saint-Denis, France. It is located from the center of Paris. History Inhabited since pre-Roman times, the area is thought to have been a small village up through the Middle Ages. With its proximity to Par ...

where he opened a

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

two years later. The company has since been integrated into Alstom, and La Courneuve's premises are still operated by GE Power Service. This entity manages the maintenance of turbomachines,

turbo-pump A turbopump is a propellant pump with two main components: a rotodynamic pump and a driving gas turbine, usually both mounted on the same shaft, or sometimes geared together. They were initially developed in Germany in the early 1940s. The purpos ...

s and turbocompressors installed on nuclear, thermal and industrial sites in France and in some parts of the world. In 1928 he founded the ''

Association Française de Normalisation Association Française de Normalisation (AFNOR, English: French Standardization Association) is a Paris-based standards organization and a member body for France at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The AFNOR Group develop ...

'', the French national organization for standardization, and served as president. Rateau was a Commander of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

() and a member of the French Academy of Sciences (). {{DEFAULTSORT:Rateau, Auguste 1863 births 1930 deaths People from Royan 20th-century French engineers 20th-century French inventors Steam turbines Turbines Members of the French Academy of Sciences École Polytechnique alumni Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Mines ParisTech alumni