Technical invention and institutional credit in France and Britain in the 18th century

Abstract

This paper studies the means by which an invention could get institutional credit in eighteenth‐century France and England. The first part focuses on exclusive rights, patents and privilèges: though similar, patents relied on the inventor's responsibility and resources (patents were expensive) and privilèges were grounded on State investment. Privilèges were delivered after close scientific examination and could be associated to financial rewards, which were much favored by the enlightened Bureau du Commerce. A French inventor would never pay for a privilège; instead, his title was the price of the service he offered to the State and to public good. The second part tries to test this statement by changing scales and observing the urban frame for encouraging inventions and scientific societies; the gap between France and England sometimes seems less important. This is confirmed in the third part, concerning the migration of institutional features between France and England and the new meanings which were invested in the old form of the privilège. Before the brevet appeared in 1791, the privilège had already become a useful instrument in the hands of dynamic entrepreneurs and was also legitimated as a natural right for ingenious creators.