Le moteur hydraulique en France au XIXe siècle: Concepteurs, inventeurs et constructeurs by Bruno Belhoste, et al

Abstract

356 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Part 3 looks to wider applications of the quantifying spirit. Anders Lundgren notes the increasing use of quantitative forms to express chemical facts. He further argues that the quantification of the chemical revolution—often mentioned, but seldom examined—was influenced by economic interests and by experimental physics. The balance, for instance, was used in such practical arenas as metallurgy and assaying well before its introduction to the laboratory. James Larson shows that while most 18th-century naturalists elucidated the fixed, intelligible order of nature, many struggled to make sense of the diversity that seemed to threaten that order. The case here is hybridization and numerous experiments undertaken to establish the reproductive limits of plant species. In an essay of particular interest to readers of T&C, Svante Lindqvist presents a new slant on the science-technology interface. While Western technology has long aimed at technical efficiency and economy, he argues, it was not until the late Enlightenment that some institutions had sufficient control over the material and social world to make effective use of the tools, borrowed from science, of “systematic experimentation and quantification in fixed units using precision instruments” (p. 291). In support of this argument he offers three examples of successful “labs in the woods”: the quantification of waterpower technology and the optimization of charcoal production, both sponsored by the Swedish Ironmasters’ Association, and the measurement of manpower carried out in a Swedish naval yard. Henry Lowood presents forestry management as a prime example of the mathematically based cameral sciences that arose in German­ speaking central Europe during the 18th century; Karin Johannisson describes the raging debate over quantification in political economy; and Roger Hahn writes on Laplace, who is said to epitomize the quantifying spirit. Deborah Warner Ms. Warner, a curator at the National Museum of American History, recently organized “The Systematic Spirit,” an exhibition on science in America in the late 18th century. Le moteur hydraulique en France au XIX' siècle: Concepteurs, inventeurs et constructeurs. By Bruno Belhoste et al. Paris: Belin, 1990. Pp. iv + 317; illustrations, tables, notes. F 100.00 (paper). This iconoclastic study of houille blanche, the French metaphor for waterpower devised by Aristide Bergès, is the culmination of a decade of research and breaks the image of the empirical, self-taught mechanic, the image of French industry clinging to archaic technol­ ogy in the face of progress, and the image of the French firm trapped by conservatism, routine, and inertia. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 357 The first of the volume’s five articles, by Bruno and Jean-François Belhoste, traces the earliest theoretical foundations in the develop­ ment and application of machine theory, a new branch of applied mechanics at the frontiers of rational mechanics and engineering science, to waterwheels and turbines from such 18th-century precur­ sors as Antoine Parent and Jean-Charles Borda, through Jean-Nicolas Hachette, who taught at the École Polytechnique, and Claude-Louis Navier and Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis, who interjected Lagrangian mechanics, to the more practice-oriented work of Claude Burdin and Jean-Victor Poncelet. The story of Poncelet is taken up in the second article by Bruno Belhoste and Louis Lemaître. Using the long-neglected archives of the École Polytechnique, the authors focus on the artillery and engineering corps of the army, whose officers were the most influen­ tial contributors to waterwheel and turbine theory and practice in the period about 1820-60 because of their responsibility for operating arms manufactures, powder works, foundries, and other establish­ ments that utilized hydraulic power. Poncelet became interested in waterpower theory when he was given the task of modernizing an old forge at the Metz arsenal, and out of that practical work came the Poncelet wheel. Military officers like Poncelet and Arthur Morin also influenced the improvement of wheel and turbine design in the private sector and even arbitrated the rivalry among the Fourneyron, Jonval, and Fontaine turbine manufacturers. The last three articles focus on enterprise and innovation. Claudine Fontanon culls the archives of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) to tell the story of Arthur Morin, from his appoint­ ment to the newly created chair of...