Robert Vinçotte

Robert Vinçotte (Antwerp, 1844-Schaarbeek, 1904) was a Belgian engineer who laid the basis for industrial workplace safety in his native country. He was involved in the founding of the two companies that would dominate the Belgian inspection and certification market during the twentieth century. He was also the brother of Thomas Vinçotte, a famous Belgian sculptor.

Vinçotte was born in Antwerp. His father was Jean-Henri Vinçotte (1807-1890), a man who started out as a communal teacher but eventually, through studies in Leuven and Liège, became first a professor in Antwerp, then Ghent, and ended his career as a high school inspector (a function that was brand new and very prestigious at the time). Vinçotte Sr. was a highly respected man, once described as "la personnification du devoir et du devoir austère. Ses inspections étaient conduites de la façon la plus consciencieuse"

Robert Vinçotte also attended school in Liège and in 1865, gaining the titles of "ingénieur honoraire des mines" (honorary mining engineer) and "docteur en sciences physiques et mathématiques" (doctor in physical and mathematical sciences). In addition, he was allotted a post as a mathematics teacher at the Atheneum of Brussels, a great honour in those days. While teaching, Vinçotte deepened his explorations of the explosion of steam boilers.

In 1872 Maurice Urban, a director of the National Railway Company of Belgium, asked him to take charge of a new organisation, which would be created for the purpose of inspecting steam boilers in factories. At the time, Vinçotte expressed the problem the new association (and the whole of the industrialized world) faced as follows:

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