Société philomathique de Paris

The Société philomathique de Paris is a multidisciplinary scientific and philosophical society created on 10 December 1788 on the initiative of the agronomist Augustin-François de Silvestre and the mineralogist Alexandre Brongniart. It is made up of a limited number of elected members, takes the motto Étude et amitié, and serves as a kind of antechamber to the Académie des sciences while promoting the work of its members through its monthly Bulletin. When the Convention closed the Académie des sciences in 1793, the society became the only holder of the scientific publications of the time until the academies reopened as the Institut in 1795. In this atlas it appears as the society that received the inventor of the optical telegraph, Claude Chappe, at the end of 1792, after his papers in the Journal de Physique had given him the standing to be admitted.