Salomon de Caus

Salomon de Caus (1576 to 1626) was a French engineer and architect, born in Dieppe, whose work covered architecture, mechanics, hydraulics, perspective, music, organ building and sundials. He decorated royal residences in England with ingenious mechanical inventions and built palaces in Germany. He was among the first to use steam power in the design of a hydraulic machine. In 1615 he published Les Raisons des forces mouvantes, which showed a steam-driven pump similar to one developed by Giambattista della Porta some years earlier, and on that basis Arago later called him the inventor of the steam engine. That title is generous, since his device was a fountain pump and not a working engine, but it explains his place in energy history.