Émile Belot’s Models, or an Engineer’s Quest for Scientific Legitimacy

Abstract

Between 1905 and 1937, Émile Belot, an engineer and then director of a public tobacco factory, threw himself into scientific research seeking to reconstruct the history of the formation of the solar system. This article goes over and analyses the experimental practices Belot drew on in support of his theory, looking at the equipment he manufactured and operated in his “experimental cosmogony laboratory.” Together with a few other French engineers, Belot persistently sought to prove his legitimacy to address astronomical and geological issues. His machines reproducing the formation of spiral nebulae, volcanoes, or lunar craters acted both as material resources for deciding between rival scientific hypotheses, and as tools which, by analogy, materialised the mechanical nature of the cosmos Belot hoped to study without being confined to the scientific margins.