Lazare Weiller

Lazare Weiller (20 July 1858 – 12 August 1928) was a French engineer, industrialist and politician. He was born in Alsace and received a technical education in England and in his cousin's copper factory in Angoulême. He was very interested in the physical sciences, particularly the use of electricity to transmit sound and images. He proposed a system for scanning, transmitting and displaying images that was the basis for experiments by various television pioneers. He sponsored early aviation experiments by the Wright brothers. He founded several companies including a telephone wire manufacturer, a taximeter manufacturer, the first Parisian cab company to use automobiles, an aircraft company and a wireless telegraphy company. He was a deputy during World War I (1914–18) and then a senator until his death. Life Lazare Weiller was born in Sélestat, Bas-Rhin, on 20 July 1858. His parents were Leopold Weiller (born 1807) and Reine Ducasse/Duckes (born 1819). He came from a Jewish family of Alsace. His grandfather, Bar Koschel, had applied for French citizenship in Seppois-le-Bas in 1808, took the name Bernhard Weiller, settled in Sélestat and became a "Judaic teacher". His father Léopold, a trader, married Reine Duckes, a servant. His family became wealthy. Alsace became part of Germany in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War. Weiller's mother was an ardent patriot and wanted him to study in France. He was sent to Angoulême to stay with his uncle Moïse Weille while he attended school. His uncle had a business making metal fabrics for the paper industry that he had transferred from Sélestat to Angoulême. Weiller went on to the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris. He was not able to enter the École Polytechnique due to health problems, and instead went to Trinity College, Oxford, in England to improve his English and study Greek, physics and chemistry. After his military service he joined his uncle's company in Angoulême.