Salomon de Caus

Salomon de Caus 1576-1626, French engineer and physicist, educated in England. From 1614 to 1620 he was engineer to the Elector Palatine, Frederick, at Heidelberg. Because of his Les Raisons des forces mouvantes avec diverses machines (1615), an early exposition of the principle of steam power, he has been considered the originator of the steam engine.

Caus, or Caux, Salomon de (c.1577–1626). French hydraulics engineer and designer of gardens. He laid out the formal gardens at Heidelberg (described in his Hortus Palatinus …, published (1620) in Frankfurt by De Bry) for Frederick V (1596–1632), Elector Palatine of the Rhine (1610–20) and his consort, Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain (1596–1662). These extraordinary gardens (only known from the Hortus Palatinus, as they were systematically destroyed during the Thirty Years War) contained ingenious waterworks and fantastic grottoes similar to those illustrated in his Les raisons des forces mouvantes, published (1615) in Frankfurt by Norton and in Paris (1624) by Sevestre and Droüart.

Bibliography

Colvin (1995);
Journal of Garden History, i/1 (January–March 1981), 67–104, and i/2 (April–June 1981), 179–202;
Maks (1935)