A string of cups and medals in a window. More or less complete machine prototypes. Spare parts everywhere. This bric-a-brac represents a little over a quarter of a century of inventions of all kinds by Jacques Pitoux, an adventurer with a thousand lives based six years ago in Mimizan (Landes).
It was by imagining a revolutionary champagne cork twenty-seven years ago that Jacques Pitoux gave up everything to embark on a frenetic race for creation which continues to drive him. And to bring it to life. For his latest, the block’fire, an automatically triggered fire extinguishing ball, he even created a company. At the same time, it is also developing fire-fighting drones for firefighters. 20 minutes went to meet this “Géo Trouvetou” from Landes, in his workshop in Biscarosse.
You are finalizing a new concept for a firefighting drone carrying a fire extinguishing ball that bursts above the fire, as part of the fight against forest fires. What led you to work on this concept?
A few years ago, we had already created with my company Flight Control, now Block’Fire International, the first firefighting drone which dropped fire extinguishing balls, but without an onboard telemetry system. We have now equipped it with a telemetric system allowing the ball to burst at the desired height, for greater efficiency in fighting fire outbreaks. But we also work on monitoring areas after the fire has been extinguished, because this mobilizes a lot of firefighters on the ground, who cannot intervene elsewhere during this time. We have therefore developed a drone equipped with a thermal camera which detects the hot spot(s) remaining after a fire, and onto which we throw an extinguishing ball. The drone also provides the GPS point for faster intervention by firefighters on the ground, who do not have to cover tens or even hundreds of hectares.
This is for the field of Civil Security, but you also have a commercial activity, since Block’Fire is marketed to the general public?
These fire extinguishing balls are automatically triggered, thanks to its shock and start system which has been gold medal at the Lépine competition in 2021, have been on sale since July 1. We are effectively targeting the individual market, who can use it as a fire extinguisher by throwing the ball on the fire, it will then burst and disperse its product, or passively, that is to say by positioning near a sensitive point such as an electrical panel. In the event of a fire, the fire will come into contact with the ball, which will cause it to burst and allow it to be extinguished immediately, before it spreads to the rest of the house. The majority of these fires are due to an electrical problem – meter, panel, etc. – hence the importance of having such a prevention device.
Your automatically triggered fire extinguisher ball won a gold medal at the Lépine competition in 2021. It was your ninth award. Are you what we call a serial inventor?
Yes, it started in 1996, I created a buzz with a champagne cork which allowed, by pulling a small cord, to remove the excess pressure between the top of the wine level and the bottom of the cork. . There are those who like to pop the cork, but there are also those who are embarrassed by it, or who are afraid, so the idea was to pull the string to open the bottle like a still wine. It was my first invention and I won a silver medal, but above all it allowed me to make almost all the TVs… And I loved it!
Was this cap subsequently marketed?
Two brands of champagne marketed the product, but sales were too low. We were touching on tradition. I still sold the patent for a million francs.
And you continued with inventions of all kinds?
In 2011, I won the Lépine competition with a multi-pod coffee machine, which uses all the pods you find on the market. This was not commercialized either, due to lack of funds. Then I moved on to a robot oyster opener. The idea was to place the machine in the middle of the table, and everyone placed their oyster on it, which opened in four seconds by closing the device. In 2012, I invented the first prototypes of a glass cover with an integrated straw, also called an anti-intrusion cover, even if I never received a cent from it, because I had done it to make service to a friend and business partner, and personally I didn’t believe it at all…
Where did this passion for invention come from?
I have been a handyman since I was little. I also read the encyclopedia The whole Universe, in which there were all the inventions. This fascinated me. But I quickly wanted to work to earn money, without a diploma I did several jobs, DJ, music production assistant, then I arrived in advertising in La-Roche-sur-Yon. One day, when I was living in Nantes, we opened a bottle of champagne with friends, and when we popped the cork we lost a quarter of the bottle. Everyone gets annoyed, they shout, “it’s rubbish”, “at the price we pay for it”… In the evening I go to bed and I think, and I tell myself that there must be something to do. I went to buy all the literature on champagne, then I went to find a winemaker in Saumur who used the Champagne method and who explained everything to me.
That’s when I started tinkering with something with a little valve inside, a cord, and it worked. I wrote to 32 champagne houses, I received lots of sympathetic but negative responses, and finally three agreed to follow me on the adventure and sponsor me for the Paris Fair. Today I have a total of nine gold medals in the Lépine competition, and I have filed around forty patents. And it’s not finished.