Ferrié, Gustave-Auguste

Gustave-Auguste Ferrié, (born Nov. 19, 1868, St. Michel-de-Maurienne, Savoie, Fr.—died Feb. 16, 1932, Paris), French scientist and army general who contributed to the development of radio communication in France.

He was graduated from the École Polytechnique, Paris, in 1889 and entered the army engineers corps. From 1893 to 1898 he advanced in the military telegraph service. When Ferrié was named to a committee exploring wireless telegraph communications between France and England, he found the subject on which he would focus his scientific career. In 1899 in Paris he participated with Guglielmo Marconi in experimental wireless telegraphy between France and England. In 1903 he proposed using the Eiffel Tower in Paris to mount antennas for long-range radiotelegraphy. Under his direction a transmitter was set up in the tower, and its effective range increased steadily from an initial 400 km (250 miles) to 6,000 km (3,700 miles) in 1908. He then turned to the development of mobile transmitters to enable military units to stay in radio contact with Paris.

Ferrié created a radio section at the École Supérieur d’Électricité, Gif sur Yvette, Fr. He experimented with radio transmissions from aircraft to enable the aerial direction of artillery fire. When World War I began, Ferrié, then a colonel, was named director of French military radio communications and assembled a corps of scientists and technicians who set up a network of radio direction finders from the English Channel to the Jura.

In 1922 he was named to the Academy of Sciences. He was promoted to general in 1925.