Messier

George Messier owned a factory for "pneumatic equipment" at least as early as 1920. He also developed a type of air suspension for automobiles. In 1920 he created the company Messier Automobiles and marketed the air suspension. From 1925 he produced automobiles on his own account, using the Messier name. In 1931 Messier abandoned automobile production in order to concentrate primarily on aircraft landing gear after having built and flown the Messier Monoplace Laboratorie monoplane, to test a retractable bicycle type undercarriage.

At least one source claims that Messier's air suspension was the basis for the revolutionary Hydropneumatic suspension of later Citroën models including, most notably, the 1955 DS. The inventor of the Hydropneumatic suspension, Paul Magès, was born in 1908, so it is feasible that he had heard of the Messier system, but rather than air, Magès used compressed nitrogen as the springing mechanism and pressurized oil for damping.