Armand Antoine Agénor de Gramont, 12th Duke of Gramont (29 September 1879 – 2 August 1962) was a French nobleman, scientist and industrialist. He was known by the courtesy title of Duke of Guiche until 1925, when he succeeded his father as Duc de Gramont.
In 1908, on the advice of Professor Carlo Bourlet, he established a laboratory for aerodynamic experiments in the garden of a retirement home founded by his parents-in-law in Levallois. In 1911, he defended his thesis for the doctorate in science at the Paris-Saclay Faculty of Sciences, entitled Essai d'aérodynamique du plan, the first thesis devoted to this subject in France. He then won the Fourneyron Prize from the French Academy of Sciences with Gustave Eiffel.
During World War I, Gramont was a motorist interpreter with the British Army Corps, then an aviator in the Technical Section of Aeronautics where he met the scientist Henri Chrétien. In March 1916, the Aviation Manufacturing Service of the Ministry of War asked Gramont to transform his aerodynamics laboratory into a workshop for manufacturing optical devices, particularly collimator sights. He observed the inadequacy of the French Army's equipment in precision optical instruments and the absence of engineers capable of developing them. He then headed a committee in favor of the creation of an institute of applied optics responsible for training a corps of optical engineers. Although the decision in principle was taken by the Government in 1916, the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Optics (SupOptique), which he chaired until his death, did not begin its activities until 1920. His daughter Corisande was a student engineer there.
As an industrialist, with the ambition of competing with German production, he founded in 1919 and managed the company Optique & Précision de Levallois (OPL), which took over from the optical device manufacturing workshop. Its headquarters were located at the same location, 86, Rue Chaptal in Levallois-Perret. The army was its main customer until World War II. In 1938, Armand de Gramont, wanting to diversify OPL's production towards the civilian world, had a factory built at Châteaudun in Eure-et-Loir. The company then produced famous cameras under the Foca brand.[9]
Henri Armand Antoine de Gramont (1909–1994), styled Count of Gramont, who married Élisabeth Meunier du Houssoy, a daughter of Robert Meunier du Houssoy, in 1939.[11]
Jean Armand Antoine de Gramont (1909–1984), styled Count of Gramont, who married Ghislaine Meunier du Houssoy, a daughter of Robert Meunier du Houssoy, in 1941.[11]
Charles Louis Antoine Armand de Gramont (1911–1976), styled Count of Gramont, who married Shermine Baras.[10]
Corisande Marguerite Élisabeth de Gramont (1920–1980), who married Count Jean-Louis de Maigret in 1945.[10] They divorced and she married Baron Philipp von Günzburg, son of Baron Pierre von Günzburg, in 1952.[10]
A rare film clip shows Proust (in bowler hat and grey coat) at Gramont's wedding in 1904.[12] Proust’s wedding gift to Gramont was apparently a revolver in a leather case inscribed with verses from the bride’s childhood poems.
Through his eldest son Henri, he was a grandfather of Antoine de Gramont, 14th Duke of Gramont, himself the father of Antoine, 15th Duke of Gramont.[1]
^Prose. Prose Publishers. 1971. p. 65. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
^ abcdeJaurgain, Jean de (1968). La Maison de Gramont, 1040-1967 ... (in French). les Amis du Musée pyrénéen, [place de l'Église,]. p. 656. Retrieved 18 September 2024.