Representing Mechanical Arts in Diderot’s Encyclopédie

Abstract

Representing Mechanical Arts in Diderot’s Encyclopédie JOHN R. PANNABECKER A single art about which one would want to repre­ sent everything and say everything would furnish vol­ umes ofdiscourse [written texts] & plates. One would never finish if one proposed to render in figures all the states through which a piece ofiron passes before being transformed into a needle. That the discourse follow the process of the artist to the last detail, fine. As for the figures, we have restricted them to the im­ portantmovementsoftheworker& onlythe moments of the operation that are very easy to depict and very difficult to explain. We have limited ourselves to the essential circumstances, to those ofwhich the repre­ sentation,when itiswell done, leads necessarily to the knowledge ofthose that one does not see.1 Thus did Denis Diderot (1713-84), editor of the famous Encyclo­ pédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, acknowl­ edge at the outset some of the difficulties in representing the meDr . Pannabecker is professor of technology at McPherson College, where he has taught since 1982. He headed the department of technology there from 1982 to 1990, during which time he managed the McPherson College automobile restora­ tion technology program. He gratefully acknowledges the assistance ofJoan Rich­ ards, Rachel Pannabecker, Ken Alder, Ray Santee of McPherson College Interlibrary Loan, and the librarians and staffofresearch institutions in Paris: Bibliothèque Nati­ onale, Archives Nationales, Archives de l’Académie des Sciences, Bibliothèque de l’Institut, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, and Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. Earlier drafts of this article were prepared during a summer seminar funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Archival and library research in France was facilitated by a sabbatical leave from McPherson College. 'Denis Diderot, “Prospectus,” in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert, vol. 1 (Paris, 1751; reprint, New York, 1969), p. xl. Diderot’s “Prospectus” was first published in 1750 and republished as part of the “Discours préliminaire” (by Jean le Rond d’Alem­ bert) introducing the Encyclopédie, vol. 1, pp. xxxiv-xlv. When I cite the “Prospectus” in this article the reference is to this republished version. Because all other articles in the Encyclopédie can be found in alphabetical order, volume and page numbers are omitted here.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technolog)'. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3901-0002S02.00 33 34 John R. Pannabecker chanical arts in words and pictures. Nor did the difficulties diminish as the project progressed. Yet the diverse implications of technical representation have been overshadowed by a historiography that fo­ cuses on liberal philosophy and politics. This article is an attempt to redress this imbalance, at least in part, by uncovering the multiple meanings in the Encyclopédie s three forms of portraying the arts: namely, in articles organized alphabetically in the seventeen vol­ umes of text; in eleven volumes of pictures (engraved or etched plates); and in the “explanations” accompanying the plates. Diderot regarded the representations of the arts as a social respon­ sibility. As the Encyclopédie spread across Europe and to the New World, it served as a vehicle for transmitting technological ideas.2 Thomas Jefferson bought a Lucca edition for the United States in Paris in 1781, and a generation later Thomas Blanchard, inventor of automatic machines for making gunstocks, referred to the cams illustrated in the Encyclopédie in one of his patents.3 The 1951 bicentennial of the Encyclopédie s publication stimulated new interest in the work.4 There were detractors; some historians The Encyclopédiewas published in twenty-eightvolumes from 1751 to 1772, in Paris and Neufchâtel. References here are to the reprint edition published by Readex Microprint in 1969. (Readex published the original seventeen folio volumes of text in three folio volumes and the eleven volumes of plates in one folio volume.) Trans­ lations are mine unless otherwise noted. Quotations from individual articles and references to plates and their explanations are cited in the text; page references are to the first edition. The article “Encyclopédie” in...