Sagebien Water Wheel Sketch

Alphonse Eléonor Sagebien (1807-1892) was a French hydrological engineer born in Amiens and the inventor of the

Sagebien wheel The Sagebien wheel is a type of water wheel invented by Alphonse Sagebien of France, a hydrological engineer and a graduate of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. It was one of the most efficient breastshot water wheel designs of its era; ...

- a device that made hydraulically powered systems much more efficient in extracting energy from moving water. Sagebien graduated in 1833 with a degree in engineering from the prestigious École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and worked primarily in

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

. He discovered many of the mineral seams still worked today in the French department of

Pas-de-Calais Pas-de-Calais (, " strait of Calais"; pcd, Pas-Calés; also nl, Nauw van Kales) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments ...

. After 1848, he shifted to hydrological engineering, designing and patenting the wheel that bears his name. This invention was able to extract 50% more energy from flowing water than previous paddle-based systems and is still used today. Sagebien was also a municipal counsellor for Amiens from 1878 to 1888. French engineers École Centrale Paris alumni 1807 births 1892 deaths {{France-engineer-stub