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Chouteau

(Encyclopedia)Chouteau sho͞otōˈ [key], family of American fur traders. René Auguste Chouteau, 1749–1829, b. New Orleans, accompanied (1763) his stepfather, Pierre Laclede, on a trading expedition to the Illin...

celesta

(Encyclopedia)celesta sĭlĕˈstə [key], keyboard musical instrument patented in 1886 by Auguste Mustel of Paris. It consists of a set of steel bars fastened over wood resonators and struck by hammers operated fro...

Blanqui, Louis Auguste

(Encyclopedia)Blanqui, Louis Auguste lwē ôgüstˈ [key], 1805–81, French revolutionary and radical thinker. While a student in Paris, he joined (1824) a branch of the Carbonari, a revolutionary secret society; ...

Renoir, Pierre Auguste

(Encyclopedia)Renoir, Pierre Auguste rənwärˈ [key], 1841–1919, French impressionist painter and sculptor, b. Limoges. Renoir went to work at the age of 13 in Paris as a decorator of factory-made porcelain, co...

Meudon

(Encyclopedia)Meudon mödôNˈ [key], town (1990 pop. 46,173), Hauts-de-Seine dept., N central France, a suburb SW of Paris. Metal products, automobile bodies, and explosives are the chief manufactures. The astroph...

Carolus-Duran

(Encyclopedia)Carolus-Duran kärôlüsˈ-düräNˈ [key], 1837–1917, French painter whose original name was Charles Auguste Émile Durand. He was influenced by Courbet and studied in Lille and Paris. In 1861 he w...

Lumière, Louis Jean

(Encyclopedia)Lumière, Louis Jean ōgüstˈ [key], 1862–1954, French inventors, brothers. They invented the Cinématographe, which was patented and demonstrated in 1895. This mechanism was the first to photograp...

agnosticism

(Encyclopedia)agnosticism ăgnŏsˈtĭsĭzəm [key], form of skepticism that holds that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or disproved. Among prominent agnostics have been Auguste Comte, Herbert Spenc...
 

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