Claude Ruggieri

Claude Ruggieri (1777 – 30 August 1841) was a pyrotechnician in Paris, France, who developed and wrote about innovations in fireworks design.

The five Ruggieri brothers (Antonio, Francesco, Gaetano, Petronio and Pietro) left Bologna, Italy, for Paris, France, in 1743.

[3]: 139–142  Their spectacles pyriques, fireworks mounted on fixed and moving iron armatures, were set off between acts of the theatrical performance.

[1]: 85–86 In August 1764, Giovani Battista Torre (aka Jean-Baptiste Torré) established a pleasure garden on the boulevard Saint-Martin in Paris.

[1]: 86 In subsequent generations, Michel's son François Ruggieri (1796–1862) served as a pyrotechnician to Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt.

[9] Claude-Fortuné's son, Désiré-François Ruggieri (1818–1885) became the head of the family business in France, acting as a pyrotechnician for Napoleon III.

[11] On 30 May 1770, a display planned by Petronio Ruggieri to celebrate the marriage of the future Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette ended in a disastrous accident.

[3]: 221–223 [2]: 75 [4][12] In response, the City of Paris slashed its budget for fireworks, cutting off the Ruggieri family's main source of income.

[3]: 220–221 [1]: 86 [15] There were reports that a brilliant "green fire" had been created in the 1700s, most successfully by Mikhail Vasil'evich Danilov and Matvei Martynov at the Russian court.

[16] In 1804, after hearing a first-person account of Russian green fire, Claude Ruggieri began to experiment with the addition of metallic salts to create colored flames.

He mixed them together and added alcohol, then dipped cotton threads into the wet paste and hung them on the figure of a palm tree to make the leaves appear to burn green.

– Simon Werrett[15]Ruggieri claimed to first use green fire publicly in June 1810, as part of a fireworks display for the marriage of Napoleon I and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma.

[1]: 85  Ruggieri discussed "aerial philosophy",[1]: 85  drawing on some of Joseph Priestley's ideas about the composition and reactions of gases or "airs".

[2]: 89–91 In addition to experimenting with balloons, Claude Ruggieri used rockets to transport living passengers aloft and parachutes to return them safely to the earth.