Belidor, Bernard Forest de

Belidor, Bernard Forest de (bĕrnär` fôrĕ` də bālēdôr`), 1693–1761, French engineer. He wrote numerous books dealing with mathematics, artillery, and hydraulic, civil, and military engineering. One of his engineering works, a manual of rules and tables, was reprinted until 1830. His four-volume Architecture hydraulique (1737–53) was the first work of its kind to apply integral calculus to practical problems; its influence for the next hundred years was international in scope.

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Belidor, Bernard Forest de

(born 1698, Catalonia, Spain—died Sept. 8, 1761, Paris, France) French military and civil engineer. After serving in the French army, he worked on measuring an arc of the Earth. As professor of artillery at a French military school, he wrote notable books on engineering, artillery, ballistics, and fortifications, but his fame rests primarily on his classic Architecture hydraulique (4 vol., 1737–53), covering engineering mechanics, mills and waterwheels, pumps, harbours, and sea works.