Mitrailleuse
The first "mitrailleuse" was a manually fired 50-barrel volley gun originally developed in Belgium in 1851 by the Belgian Army Captain Fafschamps, who made a rough prototype and drawings of his invention. The system was improved during the 1850s by Louis Christophe and the Belgian engineer Joseph Montigny, with the completion of the 37-barrel Montigny mitrailleuse in 1863. From 1859, Joseph Montigny proposed his design to Napoleon III, which led to the development of the French Reffye mitrailleuse, designed by Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye with the collaboration of Montigny, and which was adopted by the French Army in 1865. Initially kept under wraps as a secret weapon, it was widely used in battle by French artillery during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Smaller numbers of other designs, including the Gatling gun, were also purchased by the French government during the latter part of that conflict. The Reffye model had initially been built in small numbers and in secrecy: only about 200 were available at the beginning of the conflict. This also kept regular French field artillery in a neglected position in the eyes of French emperor Napoleon III, with dire consequences during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
Mark Serrurier
Mark Serrurier (12 May 1904 in Pasadena, California – 14 February 1988) is the son of Dutch-born electrical engineer, Iwan Serrurier, who created the Moviola in 1924 which became the technology used for film editing. Mark was a graduate of Caltech and went on to work on designs for the Mt. Palomar 200 inch (5 m) Hale telescope. The pioneering truss design he invented for that instrument's massive tube structure (the "Serrurier truss") is still used today in large telescope designs. During World War II, Mark worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory testing jet aircraft engines. In 1942, Rolf Sabersky worked in mechanical design on the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel under Serrurier and Hap Richards.
After the war in 1946 Mark took over as president of Moviola Co., his father Iwan’s company. Mark re-designed his fathers invention with many improvements and ran the company until he sold it in 1966. In 1979, Mark accepted a special Academy Award for Technical Achievement"" For the progressive development of the Moviola from the 1924 invention of his father, Iwan Serrurier, to the present Series 20 sophisticated film editing equipment"". He only accepted after insisting that his late father's name would also appear on the statue. The Oscar sat on Mark's kitchen table until his death from Alzheimer's disease on Valentine's Day 1988.