Rennequin Sualem

Rennequin Sualem (1645 − 1708) was a Walloon carpenter and engineer born on 29 January 1645 in Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, in what now is Wallonia, Belgium.

In 1678 the French king Louis XIV called for a competition to construct an effective pump system to bring water from the nearby Seine river to his chateaux at Versailles and Marly in order to supply the fountains there, and Sualem resolved to present his model, a scaled-up version of his pump system at Hoyoux.

The presentations by the other inventors were so unconvincing that the king had decided to discontinue the competition and was about to leave the room, but Sualem managed to persuade him to stay to hear his plan.

When he presented his imposing wooden model he impressed the king with his detailed description of its operation, and convinced that Sualem understood the problem to be tackled, Louis XIV commissioned him to immediately begin construction.

The machine included 14 paddlewheels to power over 200 pumps that forced water up a network of pipes to an aqueduct.