The Porrentruy lawyer François-Joseph Guélat (1736-1825) is one of the most well-known chroniclers to have described life in the Jura at the moment of the Revolution. Divided into three manuscript volumes, the text was published in 1906 by B. Boéchat et Fils in Delémont, with the title Journal de François-Joseph Guélat 1791-1802. The third volume runs from 1796 to 1802, and, like the preceding volume (MP 15 / A1451-2) concludes with a table of contents (pp. 159-177). (rou)

Online Since: 12/14/2022

This large-format manuscript (the translation of the Russian title is “Bridge-building project across the Neva River to accommodate the passage of ships at all times, 1802”) presents a bridge-building project across the Neva River in St. Petersburg. Following the title page with a decorative frame in a gray color wash (fol. 2) and the table of contents (fol. 3), there are twelve panels of watercolored drawings that give an overview and a detailed view of the project. Seven illustrations are two-sided, one of them has a fold-out page. All texts in this manuscript are in Russian and in Cyrillic script. — The bridge was designed by Charles Baird (1766–1843), a Scottish engineer who had set up a business for metal casting, machine construction and shipbuilding in St. Petersburg and who had built a cast-iron bridge nearby in 1805/06. The manuscript's bridge project, however, calls for a combination of a floating bridge and a drawbridge: the floating bridge, resting on pontoons, splits into two branches, which end in two drawbridges near the shore (fol. 4a-5), so that it is possible to cross the bridge even while a ship passes beneath it. Other panels show, for example, the lifting mechanism hidden in the pillars (fol. 14a, 16, 17) and one of the boat-like pontoons anchored in the bed of the Neva River (fol. 20a-21). – The manuscript was purchased in Copenhagen in 1978. (ruh)

Online Since: 10/08/2015