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In 2020, Stéarinerie Dubois celebrates its 200th anniversary. This is an opportunity to reflect on two hundred years of a unique human and economic adventure, led over the years by the direct descendants of the founder: here not nostalgia, but inspiration to build the future
Alia Kouki, as part of her Master 2 internship “Sources and enhancement of corporate heritage” of the University of Paris-Saclay was able to gather and format a lot of information on the history of our company, guided by Gérard Emptoz, chemist and historian of sciences, honorary professor of the University of Nantes and great connoisseur of the history of the chemistry of fatty substances in general and stearin in particular. Thank you both for their precious help.
This is the story that you will be able to discover throughout the year with this Web Series.
Good reading!
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The beginnings
Théodose Dubois was born on the twenty-one nivôse of year X (that is to say on January 11, 1802) in Chantenay-Villedieu, a small town in the Sarthe.
Why and how did this young Sarthe native find himself making candles in Paris? We do not know it. But that’s not so surprising. The upheavals that France had undergone during the Revolution and then the Empire had profoundly transformed social, scientific and economic structures, making possible many entrepreneurial adventures like those of Théodose Dubois, at the height of the industrial revolution.
La Maison Dubois, 35 rue des Lombards in Paris
We find Théodose Dubois in Paris, where the Dubois house was founded in 1820.
The company is then located at 35, rue des Lombards, in the heart of the district between Les Halles and Châtelet. This district, in its streets still medieval, gathers many small industrial companies and craftsmen, in particular of the wax makers which manufacture and sell candles, candles and candles.
In 1830, the Dubois house merged with another wax maker in the rue des Lombards, Monsieur Bertrand.
The latter is mentioned in the “Parisian Bazaar” as a reseller of the MERIJOT candle. This candle was made with a combination of wax and tallow, a combination for which a patent had been filed in 1820.
In these beginnings of the industrial revolution, the search for a solution for efficient and inexpensive lighting had become an essential issue. It was important to be able to get rid of the natural light provided by daylight, which at the time punctuated the organization of work and daily life.
It is the stearic candle that will revolutionize this field in a few years and allow everyone to light properly and at a lower cost.
The stearic candle revolution
During this same period, the knowledge and use of fatty substances were profoundly modified by the work of one of the greatest chemists of his time: Eugène Chevreul.
Chevreul published in 1823 his work “Chemical Research on Fats of Animal Origin”, in which he described the saponification reaction and the composition of tri-stearin. It shows that fatty substances are formed from a combination of glycerol and fatty acids. It isolates stearic and oleic acids, to which it gives their name.
Chevreul immediately saw that his discovery could revolutionize the candle and candle industry.
Indeed until then, the lighting was done either with beeswax candles which gave quality lighting but were extremely expensive, or with tallow candles, inexpensive but which gave poor lighting and moreover were smelly.
On the other hand, making candles based on stearic acid would make it possible to obtain good quality lighting at a lower cost.
The researcher then becomes an inventor. Chevreul, who teaches at the museum of natural history, deposits in 1824 a fifteen-year invention patent with another great chemist of the time, professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, Gay-Lussac, for a “Job in the lighting of the stearic and margaric acids that we obtain in the saponification of fats, tallows, butters and oils ”.
But Chevreul will not be able to carry out the industrialization of its invention. On the one hand, it does not have an economically viable stearic acid manufacturing process and, on the other hand, we do not yet master the technology of wicks, essential for the proper functioning of the candle.
It’s Messieurs de Milly and Mottard, who will develop the industrial production of stearic candles by saponifying tallow with lime and purifying stearic acid by pressing. Liquid oleic acid is thus separated from solid stearic acid. They also use cotton wicks treated with boric acid, another invention carried out in parallel and which eliminates the need to “blow the candles”, that is to say, having to regularly cut the wick in excess so that ‘she doesn’t smoke.
The stearic candle knows a dazzling success, and as often in the history of successful innovations, despite the attempts of Milly and Motard to reserve the exclusive exploitation of this invention, many stearineries are emerging. At the 1839 exhibition, there were already nine exhibitors of stearic candles.
Théodose Dubois also launches into the applications of this new technology and his stearic candle (which he markets under the name of “bougie de la Ruche”) as well as the improvements in the molding he brought will earn him a favorable quote during of the great Exhibition of French Industry of 1844.
Here are some examples of reports from the time:
