(b Nevers, 9 June 1730; d Colancelle, late Jan 1777). French physical scientist and mathematician. He invented the first known electric-powered musical instrument. On 26 September 1745 he began his novitiate in the Society of Jesus. He taught rhetoric in Amiens around 1755, and passed his third year of novitiate at Rouen in 1762, just at the time of the suppression of the Jesuit order in France. After spending a few years in Poznań, Poland, he served as a priest in Colancelle until his death.
A competent scientist, La Borde shared the intense interest of his times in electricity. His most important publication, Le clavessin électrique, avec une nouvelle théorie du méchanisme et des phénomènes de l’électricité (Paris, 1761), was prompted by his invention of a keyboard instrument powered by a static charge. The ‘electric harpsichord’ (sometimes confused with the clavecin chromatique of Jean-Benjamin de La Borde) was based on a warning-bell device used in many electrical test set-ups of the period. It had for each pitch two bells, between which hung a clapper. Wires communicated a stored charge to the bells. Depression of the appropriate key grounded one bell while cutting it off from the charge source, so that the clapper struck the charged bell and the grounded bell in rapid alternation until the key was released. By the inventor’s own report, the instrument sounded like an organ’s tremolo stop, and was moreover a remarkable sight in the dark on account of its production of sparks. Comment in the press was favourable, even admiring, but the instrument never became more than a curiosity. The model built by La Borde is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux arts (July 1759), 1832 only; (Oct, 1759), 2378 only [two letters from La Borde; repr. as foreword to Le clavessin électrique, lxi (1761/R1969), 264]
J.-B. de la Borde: ‘Le clavessin électrique’, Année littéraire, viii (1761/R), 169ff
J.-B. de la Borde: ‘Le clavecin électrique avec une nouvelle théorie du méchanisme et des phénomènes de l’électricité’, Journal encyclopédique ou universel, xi (1761/R), i/1, pp.43–58
Augustin and Aloys de Backer: Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus (Liège, 1853–61, 2/1869–76)
Augustin de Backer and others: Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, ed. C. Sommervogel (Brussels, 1890–1932)
FREDERIC S. MERRITT