Research, Invent, Improve: A Dictionnaire Technologique for Non-elites (1822-35).

Abstract

After nearly a quarter century of war, France faced the challenge of retooling for peace. From 1822 to 1835 a team of five savant-technologists challenged elitism through the twenty-six-volume Dictionnaire Technologique. They promoted research and innovation by redistributing technological knowledge to the general public through an accessible, comprehensive, up-to-date publication. This study illustrates the Dictionnaire's approach by focusing on innovative products made by tinsmiths and how the authors' synthesis of theory and practice promoted the acceleration of industrial change via a consumer-oriented alternative to a war economy. This study thus challenges the dominant historical narrative that has framed French technology as focused on theory against a British emphasis on practice, instead of integrated theory and practice; a French lag behind Britain, instead of a unique French artisanal path of innovation; and a repressive aristocratic political regime, instead of the pragmatic opposition of politics through dissemination of technology to non-elites.