His main contributions were improvements to steam engines and industrializing the extraction of lighting gas from wood.

Following details published in readings for young people,[1][2] Lebon has long been purported to have been assassinated on the eve of Napoleon's crowning ceremony, at the beginning of December 1804.

[3][4] While the actual time of death seems to be December 1 at 10 am, there are no contemporary evidence to sustain the story: legal documents produced by the Archives Nationales upon the 150th jubilee of Lebon make it clear that neither the engineer's servant, Euphrasie Hubert, nor the justice practitioner committed to the post mortem inventory did mention any criminal circumstance, nor any wound on the body.

Lebon's correspondence during the last months of his life make it clear he had been suffering from illness and lack of medical assistance for weeks before his untimely death.

The reasons that it has never been used must be the obvious thermal and mechanical problems, such as heat loss from the combustion products to the containing structures.