TREASURES FROM OUR ARCHIVES: NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN LARGE-DIAMETER DRILLING TECHNOLOGY FOR FOUNDATIONS ON PIERS

摘要

Benoto, a major brand... Is it an aperitif? Or an automatic gun brand? Is it a sculptor of the Quattrocento? Perhaps a motor car from the last century? There, we're getting close to it. There is an engine, rattling noises and the smell of hot oil. Benoto is a famous brand of heavy handling and public works equipment, notably clamshell grabs and large-diameter pile drillers. The firm Benoto, French despite the sound of its name, is the work of Pierre Allard, who is a member of the generation that was twenty years old in 1914. Leaving school at age fifteen, he started working in the family firm established at Persan-Beaumont in the Oise region. During his time in captivity in the First World War, he learned Russian, Romanian, German and English. As of the interwar period, he exported his products to the United States, Russia and Japan. His heavy foundation machinery proceeded by undercutting using a tacking process which made it possible to drive in tubing as digging was performed by means of a hammergrab. Le Corbusier's famous Cite Radieuse in Marseille and the Maison de la Radio (Radio House) in Paris were built on Benoto pile foundations. In the 1950s, he generated 4 billion francs in revenues and his factory had 750 workers and technicians. The drilling machines are still manufactured by the company Burton'Steel in Saint-Quentin, which bought Benoto International in 1983 and has since then delivered more than a dozen machines to Algeria, Australia and Cuba.