Louis Dorus (1812-96)

Vincent Joseph Steenkiste alias Louis Dorus was already a prominent Parisian flutist (graduate of the Conservatoire, 1828, under Guillou) when he became one of the first three French virtuosos to adopt the Boehm flute of 1832 and to write tutors for it (the others being Paul Hyppolite Camus (b 1796) and Victor Jean Baptiste Coche (1806-81)). Dorus devised a closed alternative to Boehm's open G# key that remained common until about 1860.

In 1839-40 Dorus took part in an examination of Boehm's ring-key flute at the Paris Conservatoire, but it was not adopted at that institute because the Professor of Flute, Jean-Louis Tulou, whose company also supplied instruments to the Conservatoire, was opposed to it. Having adopted Boehm's cylinder flute in 1847, Dorus replaced Tulou as Professor in 1860, the same year in which Louis Lot's cylindrical Boehm flutes became the institution's official instrument.