Histoire de l’École Polytechnique by Ambroise Fourcy

Abstract

952 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE terns has evolved from a mix of international traditions that deserve historical consideration. Todd Shallat Dr. Shallat directs the public history program at Boise State University. He recently completed a book on river and harbor development for the U.S. Armv Corps of Engineers. Histoire de l’École Polytechnique, By Ambroise Fourcy. Introduction by Jean Dhombres. Paris: Editions Belin, 1987. Pp. 516 (histoire); pp. 198 (additional material); notes, bibliography, index. F 140.00 (paper). In his introduction to this republication of Ambroise Fourcy’s classic Histoire de l’Ecole Polytechnique (brst published in 1828), Jean Dhombres points out that, in the world’s collective imagination, the Ecole Poly­ technique ranks somewhere alongside “the wines of Bordeaux, the reason of Descartes, and the Eiffel Tower.” What this has meant in terms of scholarship is that the Ecole Polytechnique is without doubt the most written about and most extensively studied technical school in the world. The work of Fourcy has a rather unique position within this extensive body of scholarship: not only was it the first major attempt to write a history of the Ecole Polytechnique, but also its author combined an intimate personal knowledge of the school with meticulous standards of scholarship. Fourcy spent most of his profes­ sional life working as the school’s head librarian, and thus he had access to all its published and archival documents. Among other things, his book includes a full listing of the 4,000 or so students who attended the school up to 1828 together with data on their subsequent occu­ pations. It is information like this, along with Fourcy’s knowledge about virtually every aspect of the school’s life in this early period, that makes his book worth reprinting. Dhombres has supplemented the text with a long section of explanatory notes and an appendix containing brief biographies of everyone mentioned in the book to­ gether with other prominent French scientists and engineers of the era. Equally important, Dhombres has included an extensive historio­ graphical essay in which he reviews more or less the entire body of scholarship concerning the Ecole Polytechnique that has appeared up to the present (and this is accompanied by a thorough bibliography of both primary and secondary sources). Anyone interested in sci­ entific and technical institutions generally (and anyone interested spe­ cifically in the history of French science and technology) can gain much from this essay. In effect, since the École Polytechnique has TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 953 been studied from so many perspectives, the insights that emerge from reviewing the literature about it provide a valuable guide to the analysis of scientific and technical institutions in general. And the very richness of this literature serves to emphasize the extent to which the study of technical schools and technical education has been compar­ atively neglected elsewhere (for example in the United States). Eda Kranakis Dr. Kranakis is a member of the Department of Science Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam. “The Best School in the World”: West Point, The Pre—Civil War Years, 1833— 1866. By James L. Morrison, Jr. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1986. Pp. xii + 255; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliog­ raphy, index. $27.50. Captains of the Old Steam Navy: Makers of the American Naval Tradition 1840-1880. Edited by James C. Bradford. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1986. Pp. xvi + 356; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95. These two volumes provide essential information on developments in the profession of arms in the United States. “The Best School in the World” covers the era in which developments at West Point became critical to the success of the United States on the battlefield. Captains of the Old Steam Navy deals with the professional and personal lives of selected officers whose careers included pre—Civil War and, for most of them, Civil War service. Both deal, at least in part, with the evolution of arms technology and the influence of that technology on military education and careers in the middle years of the 19th century. James L. Morrison’s work provides an in-depth analysis of the per­ sonalities involved in providing an education for army officers through...