Marc Seguin was born in Annonay in 1786.
His Parisian secondary education could not be completed because his father asked him to help in the family cloth business.
Having a curious and enterprising mind, he completed his technical and scientific training through contact with the Annonay factories and by his own means, He was influenced by his great-uncle Joseph Montgolfier, the father of hot air ballooning.
He was instrumental in the redirection of the family firm towards drapery production (Saint-Marc factory in Annonay, 1810-1816) and technical innovation (stationery felts, 1818), then towards a complete change of activity in favor of civil engineering and transport, from 1821.
A series of family businesses based on the adaptation of ideas from the « industrial revolution » then followed one another: suspension bridges, invention of the wire cable, Steam boats on the Rhône, railway, construction of locomotive machines, tubular boiler, etc.
He died in Annonay in 1875 where he returned to spend his later years.