Background
Pierre Joseph Ravel was born in Versoix, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland in 1832. His father, Aimé (or Ami) Ravel, was born in Collonges-sous-Salève in France.
baker inventor pioneer civil engineer
Pierre Joseph Ravel was born in Versoix, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland in 1832. His father, Aimé (or Ami) Ravel, was born in Collonges-sous-Salève in France.
He was a pioneer of the automobile industry. He moved to Versoix where he worked as a baker, and became a Swiss citizen in 1834 through marriage to a young Swiss girl, Caroline Grosfort. They had five children – Pierre-Joseph, Marie, Alexandrine, Louise and Edouard.
The youngest, Edouard Ravel, became a talented painter.
Pierre Joseph was interested in music as a child. Pierre Joseph Ravel became a civil engineer
After completing his engineering studies, he directed construction of the railway line from Madrid to Irun in Spain. He had moved to Paris by 1868.
On 2 September 1868 he obtained a patent for a "steam generator heated by oil, applied to locomotion".
Afterwards he invented a supercharged two-stroke engine. Ravel drove his steam-driven automobile for short trips in the industrial areas around Paris just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. During the war the shed where the machine was stored was buried under the fortifications built for the defense of Paris, and Ravel was ruined.
Soon after the war he again became involved in railroad construction in Spain.
