The "Master of the King's Machines"
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Jacques Besson was born in 1530 in the hamlet of Colombières, in the Vaudois region between Briançon and Sestrière. Amid the religious conflicts of the time, he was a committed Protestant. He spent some time in Switzerland, probably to escape the persecution carried out under Henry II. In 1557, he was in Lausanne, where he installed fountains; two years later he was in Zurich, and finally in Bern, where he made a living by teaching mathematics. There he published his first book, on distillation.
In 1562, he placed himself under the protection of the agronomist Olivier de Serres in the Vivarais, where he served as a pastor. Following a falling-out between the two men, Besson moved briefly to Lyon and then to Orléans, where he once again taught. It was around this time that he published Cosmolabe ou instrument universel (Cosmolabe or Universal Instrument), describing a device of his own invention, followed by L'Art et Science de trouver des fontaines cachées sous terre (The Art and Science of Finding Springs Hidden Underground)… in which he refuted the then widely accepted claim that seawater travelled underground and rose to feed springs.
Through the intervention of his friend Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, he secured the protection of Renée de France, the younger daughter of Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne, and settled in Montargis in 1569. He often travelled to Paris; Charles IX appointed him "Master of the King's Machines". He then seems to have fled to London, where he died a few months later, in late 1572 or early 1573.
Useful instruments for astronomy
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