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Not Just the Tudors
Versailles: Science & Splendour
00:33:56
Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb visits London's Science Museum to find out how the famous palace became a hotbed of scientific thinking.
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Brilliant Rivals and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:28]
Matthew Howes
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- [00:46]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com oh my God.
- [01:00]
Matthew Howes
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
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Matthew Howes
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
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- [01:24]
Matthew Howes
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- [02:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to not just the Tudors from history. Hit the podcast in Explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots From Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. I've come to the Science Museum in South Kensington in London to experience an exhibition that's whisking visitors back in time to the glittering world of the Sun King's palace at Versailles. The opulent halls of Versailles were not just filled with dazzlingly dressed courtiers and royal intrigue. They positively buzzed with scientific discovery and innovation. The exhibition, titled Versailles Science and Splendor, which runs until April 2025, peels back the gilded layers of the famous palace to reveal its lesser known role as a powerhouse of 17th and 18th century scientific thinking. There are more than 100 treasures on view that showcase Versailles as a fascinating crossroads of science and power. There's Louis 15th's actual rhinoceros. Yes, you heard me right. An incredibly detailed map of the moon, as well as the world's most famous watch, designed for none other than Marie Antoinette herself. There are also stories to discover of remarkable pioneering figures like Madame du Coudray, who trained thousands of midwives across rural France, proving that Versailles influence extended far beyond its lavish gardens. The exhibition has been hailed as a masterclass in brilliant storytelling and a glittering science history blockbuster. And I'm going in now to meet associate curator Matthew Howes, who has brought Versailles fascination with science to life in this extraordinary new exhibition. Matthew, it's a wonderful opportunity to speak to you about Versailles and all the Louis. So we're talking about three kings called Louis, their palace at Versailles and their scientific thought. Can you just fill us in on the period of history we're talking about?
- [04:55]
Matthew Howes
Sure, and thank you so much for having me here today. So we are talking about the reigns of Louis XIV, 15th and 16th. So Louis XIV makes Versailles the of the French court as well as his chief royal residence. He makes it the center of the court in 1682, and he and the subsequent Louis lived there until 1789, when we have the outbreak of the French Revolution. And in that year, Louis XVI and the royal family vacate the palace and move to Paris. And that is the end of Versailles as a royal residence in this period.
- [05:30]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So when we think about the story of these French kings, absolutist monarchs and science, it begins with Louis XIV founding the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Paris Observatory. And similar organizations are being founded in Italy and England at the same time. So what difference does it make that in France, this is an institution that's funded by the French state, arranged by Louise Minister Jean Baptiste Colbert.
- [06:03]
Matthew Howes
Yeah, I think that's a really important defining feature of the French Academy, this heavy institutionalization of science that is very much about making sure science is allied to state interests. So the sort of equivalent in Britain is the Royal Society, which is founded a few years before. But unlike the Royal Society, you know, the members of the French Academy, you know, receive a pension from the state, they're well funded, they are all experts and their work is specifically designed to enhance state interests. So it might be, you know, one of the big challenges at the moment of the founding was trying to work out how to accurately calculate longitude. This is, you know, a time when France is expanding its colonial empire. It's really important to be able to pinpoint your exact position, especially at sea. And this was proving really problematic. And it was an interest that France and other European powers were interested in.
- [06:57]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So there's a direct relationship between scientific innovation and the extension or centralizing of power?
- [07:04]
Matthew Howes
Yes, I think so very much.
- [07:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What sort of activities is the Royal Academy of Sciences pursuing? Who are the people and what are they doing?
- [07:14]
Matthew Howes
So the Academy's founding members are interested in all sorts of scientific disciplines, so cartography, geography, anatomy, what we would now refer to as zoology, I guess so, you know, the study of animals and natural history, botany, chemistry and physics. So a lot of what we recognize as science today as well.
- [07:33]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One of the wonderful things about this exhibition is that you demonstrate how the gardens at Versailles show off scientific principles. How so?
- [07:44]
Matthew Howes
The gardens are amazing and I'm definitely going to have to go back to Versailles and look at them with a whole new perspective, which I haven't appreciated before, but they were a huge project for Louis xiv, who, you know, really wanted the gardens to reflect his royal power. And he employed landscape architect Andre Le Notre to remodel the grounds into a really spectacular manifestation of that royal power. So there's a lot of work being done to survey the local terrain and topography, to level it, so that the grounds can be physically reshaped into these sweeping vistas. There's a lot of use of perspective, the use of controlled perspective to create really controlled sight lines and views. And everything sort of extends down this central axis from the King's bedchamber at the palace down through the gardens, leading to Le Notre's masterpiece, which is a cross shaped canal. And he also uses things like optical illusion in the design of the gardens. So the canal has pools of different sizes that appear the same size when viewed from the palace because of the effects of distortion perspective. But the real innovation I Suppose with the gardens comes with the waterworks and the fountains for which Versailles is so famous.
- [08:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Tell me more about that. Because this draws on skills of hydraulic engineering really to make it work, doesn't it?
- [09:05]
Matthew Howes
Absolutely. And on a scale that is really unprecedented at the time. So, you know, the fountains are the centerpiece of Versailles gardens, and the challenge of the day was actually getting water to the palace, because Versailles as a site didn't have a natural water supply that was suitable. So there was a huge amount of engineering work done to bring water to the palace. First of all, by surveying the local countryside and working out how to bring water from surrounding rivers and lakes down into reservoirs that could feed the palace. And when that proved insufficient, there was this incredible scheme, the Marli machine, which was built. So this was an extraordinary hydraulic engineering apparatus, monumental in scale, that sat on the River Seine. The trouble is, the River Seine lies below elevation to the palace. So the challenge for the Marley machine was to pump water uphill, which was a huge engineering challenge of the day. And actually, the machine itself wasn't terribly efficient. It couldn't provide enough water to have the fountains running constantly, which is what Louis really wanted. So we're told that as he and his company would pass through the gardens, there would be fountainers turning taps on and off to at least give the illusion of continuous spectacle with the fountains.
- [10:27]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
As long as the fountains are spouting wherever the King is.
- [10:30]
Matthew Howes
Yes, enough.
- [10:31]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I loved also the detail that you've got those canals and you've got the gardens laid out along the route of the sun to make the most of the light. And given that we think of Louis XIV as the Sun King, it seems a wonderful metaphor that the gardens he having created are reflecting that light back to him.
- [10:55]
Matthew Howes
Yes, he's very conscious about his image. And especially in the early part of his reign, the motif of the sun is really key to how he's fashioning himself. And yeah, I love that detail about how the main axis of the gardens is of aligned to capture the light and the pools and the water features of the gardens. And Louis very consciously models himself on the ancient Greek God Apollo, whose symbol is the sun. And you go to Versailles and you will see the Sun King motif everywhere. And, you know, Apollo is the God of the arts and sciences. And, you know, Louis is very deliberately fashioning himself as a patron of the arts and sciences.
- [11:32]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And it seems that saint on all this again about power and about controlling nature, that actually, I can make water flow uphill, I can. I can make it continually. But from Places that there are no springs. You know, this sense of delineating and putting parameters on what nature can do according to what the King wants demonstrates his ultimate power, doesn't it?
- [11:55]
Matthew Howes
Absolutely. It's that sort of control over nature itself. And I suppose even if the Marley machine wasn't as effective as hoped, it's still nevertheless a really incredible example of the kinds of extraordinarily ambitious schemes that were driven in the name of the King.
- [12:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
In the garden at Versailles, there was also a menagerie. And one of the most extraordinary things that I have seen today is an actual rhinoceros that was presented to Louis xvi. Tell me about this.
- [12:26]
Matthew Howes
The rhinoceros is. Yeah, he's the star of our show. And most people's first reaction seems to be, that's not a real rhino. It doesn't look real, but it is a real rhino. It is a stuffed rhino. So this rhino was sent to Louis XV as a diplomatic gift from the French governor in India when the rhino was about 2 or 3 years old when it arrived at Versailles and lived at the Versailles menagerie for over 20 years. So the menagerie was in the grounds of Versailles and was a place for exotic animals to live and be displayed from all around the world. So a real statement of the King's prestige and international influence. You know, the animals themselves demonstrated, you know, French royal connections overseas and French international influence, but they were also a really important scientific resource. So animals from then actually were studied by members of the Academy and bisected after they died and the findings published by the Academy. The rhino sadly died during the French Revolution, but he was studied during his lifetime at Versailles by the Comte de Buffon, who was one of the leading naturalists of the 18th century and published this enormous multi volume work about the natural history of animals. And he's got some really lovely prescriptions from watching the rhino, you know, describe as Hyde, like the bark of an old elm tree and its ears like those of an ass, its tail like those of an ox. He says the penis is surprisingly small for such a large animal, but I've seen a watercolor of that part of the anatomy and it looks quite impressive to me. So we're not entirely sure how he died, but he was possibly drowned in the pool in his enclosure or was possibly killed on the sword blow during the revolution. So, you know, maybe as a symbol of the monarchy at a time when anti royalist feeling was high, One of.
- [14:16]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The room stewards came over and told me and my producer Rob, that when they were working out how to stuff it, they had to use a barrel. Is that true?
- [14:25]
Matthew Howes
I'm not sure. Well, so the skeleton is preserved separately and you can go and see it in Paris. And yes, the rhino hide is stuffed with a sort of wooden armature, which has sort of wooden hoops and legs. But it does give the rhino quite a spherical rotund appearance. He's a little bit overstuffed and he looks very squat in his pose. It's not terribly naturalistic, but this was quite an unprecedented work of taxidermy for the time. It's one of the first times that an animal this big has ever been stuffed. So I think there was a little bit of experimentation in how to best preserve him, but he survived this long.
- [15:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So it's extraordinary and something to think about after Christmas dinners in future years. Do we see a lot of innovation going on in this dissection work and the anatomical findings that are made?
- [15:18]
Matthew Howes
I think it's interesting that the very first publication that the Academy of Sciences produces is a work on animal anatomy. So Claude Ferraud's Memoirs for A Natural History of Animals, which is published in the reign of Louis xiv, and it uses for its source material a lot of animals from the Versailles menagerie. So it's a really nice example of how the crown and science were really.
- [15:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Intimately connected when it comes to the gardens as well. Of course, one of the functions of a garden at the time is to produce food, especially if you're trying to match the royal tastes. And I was struck by the idea that actually they needed to innovate in order to keep up with those royal tastes and to perform miracles by producing food out of season, something we take for granted. But it had to happen at some point that they would work this out. What do we know about the kitchen gardens and the use of plants?
- [16:17]
Matthew Howes
The story of the kitchen garden at Versailles is a really lovely one. And it really makes you think, as you say, how we take so much of this for granted. You know, the ability to have food, produce, you know, year round, grown out of season or, you know, flown from all over the world, which back in the day would have been a real challenge. And one of the most interesting examples of this at the kitchen garden is the story of pineapples. So Versailles was the site of the very first pineapple to be grown in France at Versailles Kitchen garden, which was grown for Louis xv. And, you know, this is a plant that comes from Central America. It's very susceptible to the cold. It's not really conducive to the Northern French climate. So a kitchen garden has hothouses built that can mimic tropical climates and allow these plants to be acclimatized. So the growing of this pineapple was a real statement of the success of horticultural technology and innovation that could be achieved. And Louis actually was so pleased that he had this lovely painting made of the pineapple which still survives.
- [17:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Isn't that wonderful? So actually being able to grow plants that have been imported to create the environment in which you can have melons or pineapples or whatever it is, and forcing things out of season.
- [17:37]
Matthew Howes
This is a really interesting story. So Louis XIV in 1686 developed rather unpleasant condition, an anal fistula which needed to be operated on. This is a sort of abnormal passageway that opens up between the bowel and the anal region. You know, operating on the royal body is a big ask. The stakes are high. So the royal surgeon, Tassie, practiced on local impoverished people first, some of whom, you know, died. But the operation was a success and Louis successfully recovered. It did really help shift the perception of surgery at the time. So at this time, surgeons part of a guild of barber surgeons, surgery wasn't necessarily seen as a very highly skilled practice, but the successful outcome of the operation helped to transform attitudes towards surgery and give it recognition as actually a highly skilled discipline. So a few decades later, in the reign of Louis xv, we see the Royal Academy of Surgery be established. So we see surgery become recognized as an independent discipline with royal back end.
- [18:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It must have been extraordinarily brave, I mean, and extraordinarily terrifying for the surgeon. But, you know, this is a three hour operation without anesthetic. Beggars belief, really.
- [18:58]
Matthew Howes
Yeah, I don't think it would have been a pleasant experience for the surgeon. And in fact, he never operated again. He had to develop this design, this special kind of scalpel to operate on the king, which had a sort of. So attached to this very sharp blade as a very long probe attachment to help operate on the fistula. So a moment of surgical innovation as well, I suppose, in this story. And we have an account of Louis health that was kept by his doctors throughout his life. And yeah, describes the operation in detail, including the lack of anesthetic.
- [19:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Also in the field of medicine, we have changes in terms of midwifery. And what's wonderful about the study of Versailles and science that you have in this exhibition is that you have really detailed the role of women. And here we have a wonderful woman, Madame Ducoudray, who's involved in trying to change the state of education. What does she do? And what new knowledge is gleaned in this period about obstetrics?
- [20:05]
Matthew Howes
So Madame Ducoudray is a chief midwife at Paris oldest hospital, and she receives a royal warrant from Louis XV to go around the French countryside all over France, teaching local women and also some men in the art of safe delivery. You know, there were reports of serious problems with childbirth in the country, mothers and babies dying. This is also a time when France is, you know, at war. There was concern about, you know, replacing the population and keeping it fit and healthy. She's a really remarkable figure because she designed these extraordinarily detailed obstetrical mannequins that she used in her teaching. So these were life size models of fetuses at various stages of development. So full term or, you know, might be twins at five months. Made of cloth which were dyed different colors to represent arteries and veins. So there's a really, you know, amazing attention to detail and they provided really excellent hands on practical experience for her midwives to, you know, have a go at trying out real life birthing scenarios which could be, you know, a straightforward birth or something more complicated like a breach. And she also published a book alongside the mannequins, which were written in French rather than Latin, so they were, you know, more accessible and had color plates and diagrams showing different birthing scenarios as well. For many students who would have probably been illiterate, you know, it's really useful to have these visual and physical means of practicing midwifery. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront.
- [22:16]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.
- [22:23]
Matthew Howes
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- [22:55]
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- [23:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
If you're like me and you love.
- [23:47]
Matthew Howes
History, but in particular you love the.
- [23:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Smutty, salacious gossip, then do I have.
- [23:52]
Matthew Howes
The perfect podcast for you?
- [23:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
If you fancy finding out about the slippery origins of lube or how Vikings linked sex and magic together, then listen no further. Join me, Kate Lister on Betwixt the Sheets, where I delve into the most outrageous, the most taboo, and the downright sexiest parts of our history. It's the kind of history that you probably wouldn't bring up at a family lunch, but you might bring it up down the pub. From the history of swear words to answering important questions like just how incestuous were Neanderthals? And so much more. Listen every Tuesday and Friday wherever it is that you get your podcasts. A podcast by history Hint. It must have been transformative. The number of women who died in childbirth, the number of babies who died in childbirth at the time was very, very high. And so this kind of dissemination of education around it changed the lives of ordinary people completely.
- [24:54]
Matthew Howes
Yeah. And we see a population boom in the later 18th century in France. And you know, Madame de Coudre trains, I think, about 2/3 of France's midwives, so it's an incredible achievement.
- [25:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
When I was a history student, we were always told to reject the great men theory of history, but does sound a little bit like Madame de Coudrey was a great woman. The role of that individual in terms of medical development. The other major thing we must talk about is the encouragement of inoculation and the extraordinary risk that that involved. What's the story?
- [25:31]
Matthew Howes
Yeah, so Louis XV dies a very horrible death from smallpox, which is, you know, the big killer of the 18th century. So Louis XVI comes to the throne in 1774 and within weeks he takes the decision to be inoculated to give him protection from smallpox. This is still, at the time, a pretty new practice in France. It was beginning to gain some recognition and popularity in Europe. It had been promoted in the Habsburg Empire. And also in Britain. An English aristocratic lady, Mary Wordley Montagu, helped promote inoculation practice in England, having seen it being done during travels in the Ottoman Empire. So this is a moment in Europe when inoculation is beginning to take hold, but in France, it's still viewed with a lot of suspicion. It's a risky procedure. What you're doing is deliberately infecting healthy people with a very small amount of the live smallpox virus. So, you know, it can still kill people if it doesn't work. And the recovery after being inoculated can be a long and painful process. So for Louis XVI to agree to do this, along with close members of the royal family, some of whom could have succeeded him had he died, was seen as a risky step. But he did it and he recovered. And there are these bulletins that record his recovery over a period of several days. You know, how he develops pustules, how he's doing in terms of feeling nauseous, headaches, he's not throwing up, thankfully, and, you know, after a few days, he's basically fully recovered. So it's a really remarkable story about, you know, again, the royals helping to shift attitudes to medicine. And there's a really lovely story about the Queen, Marie Antoinette in relation to this. So after her husband's recovery, she has one of her famous headdresses created. This is a pouf. L'inoculation, an inoculation pouf which she wears to celebrate the king's successful recovery from his inoculation. And we don't have contemporary depictions of this headdress, but there's a lovely fashion plate from the period that shows a woman wearing an inoculation ribbon in her hat, which is perhaps a nice example of how Marie Antoinette's style sort of filtered down into wider fashion trends.
- [27:57]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I'm struck with this whole story about how much information was put out into the public sphere about the King's hearth in order to promote this. We live in a country where information about the health of the royals is very closely guarded and released in a very careful and restrained way. But these bulletins, giving daily updates that you have in the exhibition, show a huge amount of information. They give quite a lot of detail about the king. And I was struck by this fact that we think of the King's body in this absolutist period as being almost Sacred. And yet all of these details about whether he's being sick or whether sweating are released to the public.
- [28:38]
Matthew Howes
Yes. And the king's body definitely, you know, a sacred site in this period. And the king's health is, you know, synonymous with health of the state. You know, the king dies, the kingdom's at risk. Many of these operations are done in quite secretive circumstances. So, you know, Louis XIV's fistula operation, for instance, there's a very small number of people who are there to be present at that operation because it's such a risky procedure. But yeah, it's really interesting to see how the news of the recovery for the case of someone like Louis XVI after his inoculation is, you know, gradually broadcast.
- [29:14]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
This is a period in which scientific knowledge is also being disseminated. Tell me about the Encyclopedie.
- [29:20]
Matthew Howes
The Encyclopedie is multi volume work that is published from the 1750s to the 1770s. And this is a really impressive body of work. It's a sort of compendium of knowledge about the arts, sciences and trades, lavishly illustrated. And it has important supporters and patrons at the French court. So someone like Madame de Pompadour, who, you know, we most typically think of as Louis XV's favorite mistress, actually was a really important patron of the arts and sciences as well. And she was one of the Encyclopedes main supporters at court.
- [29:57]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And she's one of a number of women in the 18th century who are involved in that dissemination of knowledge. How else has it done?
- [30:04]
Matthew Howes
All sorts of ways. And again, there's a really lovely example of the role of women in this case. So another aristocratic lady, Emily du Chatelet, translates Isaac Newton's Principia, so his work on gravity into French for the first time. And this is a really remarkable achievement. You know, her translation becomes the standard French translation. And she also does a lot of work in her translation to help make Newton's ideas more accessible and understandable. And she also adds her own commentary. She's a really gifted scientist in her own right and publishes her own original treatises on scientific subjects as well. So her story is a really lovely example of the will of women in the dissemination of science. And she's another woman who's perhaps in history been better remembered through her love interests like Madame de Compadour. So she was famously Voltaire's lover. But we really wanted in this exhibition to show her in her own right as a great scientific mind as well.
- [31:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We see the role of science as it's used to educate the young royals here, too, including the princesses. And the sense, of course, that most girls would not have received anything like this kind of education. But those who are at Versailles, the royal girls, have this extraordinary opportunity. What kind of education is being brought to the royals in the 18th century? Is there a sense in which they recognize that this knowledge is crucial to the extension of their power?
- [31:40]
Matthew Howes
Science was definitely seen as a fundamental part of royal education, you know, for Louis xiv, for instance, particularly science in the age of power. So things like mathematics and geometry, for military strategy and military fortification or naval engineering or astronomy. In the 18th century, we see an increasing emphasis on things like experimental physics and chemistry coming into oil education as well. This is a really exciting period of experiment, demonstration, looking at the properties of air, looking at the principles behind mechanics. And we see this in the education not just of, you know, the kings, but, yeah, the royal children as well, the princes and the princesses. There's definitely a sort of fashionability about science at this time as well. For the, you know, upper classes and the aristocracy. You'll have your libraries full of books not just about the arts, but the sciences, too. And that goes for, you know, royal women like Marie Antoinette, Louis XV's daughters as well, some of whom we know had scientific interests as well.
- [32:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And what you just mentioned there about cartography and naval engineering, that relates, I suppose, to the connection between science and colonialism and the sort of increasing global power of a country like France. How do we see those things connect?
- [33:07]
Matthew Howes
Cartography and mapping are hugely important in this period. You know, they're fundamental for knowing the size of your territory and the resources within that territory at your disposal. And I think the kings are very conscious of that. So Louis XIV has the map of France redrawn more accurately, and it's actually shown to be smaller in size than expected. So he reportedly jokes that his astronomers have cost him more territory than his military foes. And then this sort of kick starts a campaign all throughout the 18th century, into the revolution, to map France more accurately than it's ever been mapped before. You know, this is a time when France is more or less constantly at war with its European neighbors. It's looking at territorial expansion overseas. You know, it's got important trading and colonial interests as well. So having an accurate picture of the territory is really fundamental. And that work is led by astronomers, mainly the Cassini family of astronomers, who are using the latest precision instruments to accurately map France.
- [34:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Finally, we see science being used in terms of increasingly sophisticated devices like timepieces and as spectacle. Can we talk about some of the examples in which science is glorifying and magnifying the power of the royals?
- [34:34]
Matthew Howes
I think what we see with this royal connection with science is a real marriage of beauty and aesthetics with scientific ingenuity and craftsmanship. And that's perhaps best exemplified in the form of an extraordinary watch that was commissioned for Marie Antoinette and made by the leading watchmaker in Paris of the day, Abraham Louis Breguet. It took him so long to make that poor Marie Antoinette never actually lived to see it. She was guillotined in 1793 and the watch wasn't finished until the 1820s. But it was an absolutely extraordinary creation. It does a lot more than simply tell the time. It's got all sorts of additional functions known as complications, some of which Breguet invented himself. So, you know, it can tell the time, but it also has a calendar that can even adjust for leap years. It's got a stopwatch, a 48 hour power reserve indicator, a thermometer, you know, all these features that basically make it the smartwatch of its day. And it's an absolutely beautiful object to look at as well. It's got this incredibly clear, smooth rock crystal case, so you can see all the mechanism underneath. Yeah, it's a real showcase of Breguet's craftsmanship and it's a really nice example of how, as a watch that was commissioned as a gift for the Queen, it's a really nice example of the kinds of technical and artistic ambitions that were catalyzed by the royals. Another really lovely example is the first hot air balloon flight, which happened at versailles. So in September 1783, before Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the court. At the palace, we see the launch of the first ever free flying hot air balloon with living passengers, not people, but a cockerel, a duck and a sheep. And I think this was done because partly, you know, it was, it was a risky operation. This is the first flight. We don't quite know what it would be like for people. Yeah, the animals don't have much choice in the matter. But also, you know, the sheep, for instance, was thought to be quite physiologically similar to people. The duck was there because, you know, it can fly, but it was a sort of control to see if it would be affected by the balloon itself. And the rooster, again, a sort of control. But you know, an animal, a bird that doesn't fly as high as a duck, normally all the animals make it home safely. They travel for about eight minutes and a distance of about 3 km. The sheep, as we named Montausier, so climb to the sky. And it's a really thrilling moment, I think, for the royal family and the crowds to watch this event occur. You know, the fact that it happens at Versailles and is reproduced in prints from the period really helps cement the innovation of hot air ballooning as a really French invention and something that's got the French royal backing as well.
- [37:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Until today, I didn't know why in French a hot air balloon is called Montgoufier. It's after the inventor. So there's another thing I've learned today. There's such a connection here, isn't there, between science and splendor, as the subtitle of the exhibition suggests, and power as well, that we can see. How does this, this relationship between globalization that's bringing animals to Versailles, that then can be studied, but it's also developing the skills and maps and all sorts of implements that will then further that extension of power. And so there's this sort of urban flow between the two that comes out so beautifully here. It's been a really fascinating exhibition to look around and it's wonderful to talk with you and get the sort of deep background knowledge about everything that was going on at this period of time. Thank you so much.
- [38:32]
Matthew Howes
Thank you. It's my absolute pleasure.
- [38:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob Weinberg. And do join me, professor Susannah Lipscomb next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors from history hit.
- [39:00]
Matthew Howes
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- [39:30]
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