Trained as a chemist, Georges Claude was a prolific inventor who was responsible for technological developments ranging from innovations in the use of acetylene to the invention of neon lights. His inventions made him wealthy, but he spent much of this money during the 1920s and 1930s on experiments that his contemporaries considered unconventional. Claude was an eccentric man, with strong, right-wing political views. Having collaborated with the Nazis during the occupation of France in World War II, he was imprisoned after the war's end. Claude was born in Paris, France, on September 24, 1870, and was educated at the École de Physique et Chimie, a municipal school for physics and chemistry. Graduating in 1886, he was employed in the engineering department of an electricity company, and then as an engineer in several different industrial plants. He married in 1893 and subsequently had three children.

It was while working in industry...