Caus, Solomon

DE, a French engineer, B. in Normandy, towards the end of the 16th century. He first settled in England, where he was attached to the Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles I.; then in Germany, as engineer to the Elector of Bavaria. Having spent the greater part of his life with this prince, he returned to France, where he D. about 1630. "He wrote several works, in one of which, entitled Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, he speaks of the expansion and condensation of steam in a way naturally to suggest the alternate action of the piston and the principle of the steam-engine: it has therefore been suggested that the Marquis of Worcester borrowed from him the discovery of the properties of steam as a motive power."