Michel-Joseph Ransonet

Michel-Joseph Ransonet, or Ransonnet, was one of the finest French engineer/clockmakers of the second half of the 18th century. Born in Soumagne, near Liège, he appears to have served his apprenticeship in Nancy, where he settled there and got married in 1748. Recognized for his research into non-mechanical time measurement, he was the creator of one of the two meridians constructed in 1758 in the Place Stanislas in Nancy. A winner of the prize of the Société des Sciences et Belles-Lettres of the city of Nancy in the late 1760s, he appears to have retired in the early 1770s.