On July 28, 2025, La Poste issued a stamp bearing the image of Nicolas Jacques Conté, a French physicist and chemist known for inventing the artificial lead pencil.
The stamp depicts various elements representative of Nicolas Jacques Conté's career: the Oudjat eye, a reminder of the Egyptian campaign in which he participated, an observation balloon, a gear echoing his role as an engineer, and the pencil.
Clovis Rétif designed the stamp and the sheet in pencil, in tribute to Nicolas Jacques Conté.
Nicolas Jacques Conté was born on August 4, 1755, in Saint-Cénery-près-Sées (Aunou-sur-Orne). From his native cottage to the Egyptian expedition, his career was that of a technically intelligent autodidact, an experimenter and inventor who knew how to adapt to needs and resources. Having gained recognition for his paintings at the Hôtel-Dieu de Sées, he was sent by the diocese to study painting in Paris. A portrait painter, surveyor, and inventor of a rotary pump, he returned to settle in Paris and attended science classes, where his pump was used for demonstrations by the physicist and aeronaut Jacques Charles.
During the Revolution, Conté developed military ballooning. Based on a laboratory experiment by Lavoisier, he produced hydrogen by the hundreds of cubic meters for the observation balloons built at the National Aerostatic School he directed in Meudon. His eye patch served as a reminder of the dangers of his research. He also participated in the creation of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and, in war economics, invented the artificial lead pencil. The family business he founded to exploit the patent (1795) would establish his name and dominate the market for nearly two centuries. With Bonaparte in Egypt, he painted and studied the country's arts and crafts, and the Mechanical Workshops he directed supplied weapons, machines, and instruments to the army and scholars. Upon his return, he edited the Description of Egypt and invented a machine to engrave it at low cost. Founder of the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry and the Schools of Arts and Crafts, he continued his research on color and enamel. Apart from the pencil, his inventions were freely distributed, and his mercury-free barometer even accompanied the development of meteorology long after his death on December 6, 1805, in Paris.
