The Revolution guillotined Nicolas Leblanc's patron, seized his soda works and published his patent, and the state paid his heirs 49 years after his suicide

Nicolas Leblanc was private physician to the Duke of Orléans from 1780. He found a way to make soda, used for glass and soap, from common salt, the goal of a 2,400-livre prize set by the French Academy of Sciences. The duke put 200,000 livres into a soda works at Saint-Denis, near Paris, which began production in 1791. That year the National Assembly gave Leblanc a 15-year patent. The duke, known as Philippe Égalité, was guillotined in November 1793. In January 1794 the state seized the Saint-Denis works with the duke's other assets and made Leblanc's process public for the war effort. The government awarded him 3,000 francs for his services. He received 60. Napoleon's government returned the plant around 1801, but it needed repairs Leblanc could not pay for. In November 1804 arbitrators set his claim for the seized assets at 52,473 francs. The money was never paid. Leblanc and his family were in deep financial trouble, and on 16 January 1806 he shot himself. In 1855 Emperor Napoleon III gave Leblanc's heirs a payment in place of the prize.