Philippe LeBon was a French civil engineer working in the public engineering corps who became interested while at university in distillation as an industrial process for the manufacturing of materials such as tar and oil. He graduated from the engineering school in 1789, and was assigned to Angoulême. There, he investigated distillation, and became aware that the gas produced in the distillation of wood and coal could be useful for lighting, heating, and as an energy source in engines. He took out a patent for distillation processes in 1794, and continued his research, eventually designing a distillation oven known as the thermolamp. He applied for and received a patent for this invention in 1799, with an addition in 1801. He launched a marketing campaign in Paris in 1801 by printing a pamphlet and renting a house where he put on public demonstrations with his apparatus. His goal was to raise sufficient funds from investors to launch a company, but he failed to attract this sort of interest, either from the French state or from private sources. He was forced to abandon the project and return to the civil engineering corps. Although he was given a forest concession by the French government to experiment with the manufacture of tar from wood for naval use, he never succeed with the thermolamp, and died in uncertain circumstances in 1805.
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