Département

The département français is the key French administrative unit featured on original French patent documents. It is often the only location data given, for inventors located in France. Nations are usually all the data given for inventors located outside of France while filing with the French patent office. Hungarian data, when available, is quite reliable in terms of giving us the city. British data, when available, will almost always give us the most precise address data. It is rare to have the “département” mentioned on non-French patents, though Britain does this from time to time. These data are cross-referenced depending on the order in which we find the variously national patents filed by the inventors in question.

The départemental and any other locational situation of any particular inventor may change over time, and no particular key city should replace départemental data, but be added, and tracked, in its variance from patent to patent.

“Département”, as applied to French colonial possessions, may lead to some ambiguity in terms of the administrative protocols.

The région française is another, and greater, specific and official French administrative unit, also not to be confused with English region as we may use the word more generally. This will become more pertinent as we home in on geographical data in the context of the social network analysis, or otherwise.

• Alger, Algeria ; Patent FR-1907-383514 gives “Algérie (Alger)”
• Ain
• Aisne
• Alpes-Maritimes
• Ardennes
• Aube
• Aude
• Aveyron
• Basses-Alpes, this becoming Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in 1970
• Basse-Pyrénées, this being defunct since 10 October 1969, and now being Pyrénées-Atlantiques
• Bouches-du-Rhône, Marseille being a key city
• Pas-de-Calais
• Calvados
• Cantal
• Charente-Inférieure, this being Charente-Maritime since 4 September 1941
• Cher
• Constantine, our data treating it specifically as a département, within Algeria
• Côtes-du-Nord, which has been “Côtes-d'Armor” since 1950
• Deux-Sèvres
• Dordogne
• Doubs
• Drôme
• Eure
• Eure-et-Loire
• Finistère
• Gard
• Gironde
• Haute-Garonne
• Haute-Loire
• Haute-Marne, L'aéronautique et la Haute-Marne : essai chronologique, particularly an entry of 2010, giving a neat aeronautical chronology specific to this département
• Haute-Saône
• Haute-Savoie
• Hautes-Pyrénées
• Haut-Rhin
• Hauts-de-Seine, this being new, created in 1964, during the divisions of Seine and Seine-et-Oise
• Hérault
• Ille-et-Vilaine
• Isère
• Jura, Lons-le-Saunier being the key commune
• Loir-et-Cher
• Loire
• Loire-Atlantique
• Loire-Inférieure
• Loiret
• Lot-et-Garonne
• Manche
• Maine-et-Loire
• Marne
• Mayenne
• Meurthe-et-Moselle
• Meuse
• Morbihan
• Nièvre
• Nord
• Oise
• Orne
• Puy-de-Dôme
• Pyrénées-Orientales
• Rhône, Lyons being a key city
• Saône-et-Loire
• Sarthe
• Seine - This is key to our data. Though it is no longer an official French département, in this administrative sense, it was during the period on which we are focused, and in particular it was the département which included Paris. Largely for this reason it is often the initial location data we have on a majority or at least an overwhelming plurality of French inventors.
• Seine-et-Marne
• Seine-et-Oise - This is to the west of Paris, to the west of département Seine ; decided in 1964 and put in force in 1968, Seine-et-Oise was divided into new départements including Yvelines.
• Seine-Inférieure, this later becoming Seine-Maritime in 1955
• Somme
• Tarn
• Tarn-et-Garonne
• Territoire de Belfort, created in 1922
• Var
• Vaucluse
• Vendée - This is quite rare in our data, but already in existence during the period on which we are focused, Boulogne, now a FORMER commune française, was a key city ; variants on Boulogne are still in existence, with no connexion to this département. La Roche-sur-Yon and Sables-d’Olonne are inventor-pertinent municipalities we have on hand which are located within this département.

There were and are many others of course. These have been entered as they arise from our perusal of original patent documents, with various particulars being verified via French Wikipedia.