Henry Bazin: Hydraulician

The recognition of Henry Bazin (1829–1917) as being one of the outstanding experimenters in hydraulics of the 19th century was founded by his 1865 report Recherches Hydrauliques. This paper presents the main findings of that historically important work including the fundamental results on uniform flow, open channel velocity distributions, gradually varied free surface profiles and waves. The latter are of particular interest because the solitary wave, previously observed by the Englishman Russell, was reexamined as well as wave breaking and surge formation due to a sudden blockage of flow. Other topics addressed are the story about the Darcy and Bazin uniform flow formula, and the reason why others that used the Bazin data sets produce formulas that are still in use. Engravings from the original 1865 report and photos from a recent visit to the canal site illustrate this note on a historically outstanding contribution to open channel hydraulics.