I Smoked One Ciggarete A Week During Pregnancy

From the art of Suez North Seas

Another note "note reading rambling "to share my views and thoughts of the moment that it inspires, but also because it is a way to circulate this blog outside of my own research - yes, I come to the time to keep a vague idea of the fact that there is life outside of my subject I do not know how long it lasts.

Today it is a book I have mentioned several times that of Nathalie Montel on the construction of the Suez Canal, built between 1859 and 1869 (the channel, not the book). A book that has a lot of merit, for good sides, it is a model monograph on the history of art, which suits me fine, since it is precisely the kind of work I'm producing this year.

First Merit: debunking the myth of Ferdinand de Lesseps. I quote André Siegfried in the book I mentioned a few weeks ago , Suez and Panama routes world (p. 49):

can not be too much admired Ferdinand de Lesseps ;: he made the channel, it is the channel; creator of a new global way, it is the size of Magellan and Vasco da Gama.

And it continues in this vein. Montel brings it to a stature much more reasonable than promoter (Montel, p. 351), the strong sense of the word: he launched the idea, in fact ensures the promotion, going after funding .. . By cons, it practically does not intervene in the work, except for stubborn in the initial choice of site organization that does not hold water - to finally change his mind, in any discretion not to alarm shareholders. The genius of Lesseps is, in large part, seeing how important it was to monopolize the communication concerning the book: it is contractually prohibited company employees from leaking any information whatsoever on the outside. His posthumous fame showed he had fully mastered this aspect of the thing!

On the site itself, I'll let you read the book. Just remember that it is a pipeline of 162 km to dig in the desert, using in part the salt lakes that dot the isthmus. Red Sea side, an ancient port and important Suez - the point of embarkation for pilgrims of Lower Egypt on their way to Mecca. Mediterranean side, nothing: you build a port artificial dunes on the broad lagoon that separates the lake from the sea Menzaleh; it also remains a difficult approach for vessels that do not have satellite navigation, as the coast lack of landmarks. Between the two, the channel does not require a lock: it is, in the words of the day, an artificial Bosphorus. It is therefore a major operation moving, in harsh conditions and with a huge volume to extract.

The key point in the case, and more generally in the history of the shipyards, "do" or "make do". It is both a strength and a weakness of the book. The company founded by Lesseps must be the future operator of the channel but it is not an undertaking of public works - it's owner rather than contractor. The work is initially assigned globally to a contractor, Hardon. Nathalie Montel highlights the difficulties which entangled in the yard for lack of effective control of the company's achievements Hardon by the Company and demonstrates the crucial importance of the establishment by the engineer of Roads and Bridges Voisin such control. When the market is finally terminated with Hardon, work is temporarily continued in authority (the Company becoming for a time contractor) before being divided into lots and assigned to various companies, including Borel and Lavalley, which in large reinforcement of mechanization, generate about three quarters of earthworks.

My regret is that this transition by the authority is not analyzed in more detail. It is presented only in the form of failure: by conservatism, infrastructure modeled from that of Highways does to fail to implement the necessary innovations to further work, which would force it to hand over to contractors capable of taking this risk. I'm willing to believe, but I wish for this, it eliminates evidence to support the opposite hypothesis: that the company, owner, does is put in the shoes of the contracting undertaken only by default, temporarily, the time of the liquidation of the company Hardon and launch of new tenders. These completed, the Company would be naturally returned to the area that is hers, that of "doing do ". It can of course be any kind of intermediate solutions, such as Voisin, head of work for the Company, has been tempted by the direct realization of the work before realizing that he was leaving his area of expertise ... Well, the seminar will be Nathalie Montel Masters in December: I'll ask him!

Note also that the passages on the mechanization of public works, for which Suez, with its context of chronic shortage of manpower, is a special test site, are exciting, the reflections on the relationship between science and technology in the mid-nineteenth century ^e is quite challenging (for short, there is virtually no direct application of scientific advances in public works) and finally, I share fully reserves its author on the site made history techniques to the concept of engineer!

short, a good history bouqin techniques. Glop, glop.

* * *

Reference: Nathalie Montel The construction of the Suez Canal (1859-1869), A History of technical practices , editions En Forma / Press the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 1998, 381 p.

Illustration: cover of the book, Plan of the Suez Canal (Foncin / Colin / Fraysse, geography lessons for primary school certificate, Armand Colin, 1957); drag long corridor Lavalley (from Montel op. cit. , p. 240.)

Cat Allergy How Long After Exposure

January 23, 1579, a treaty uniting Holland, Zeeland, Groningen, Gelderland, Friesland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel - Protestant northern provinces of the Netherlands, raised since 1566 against their sovereign English - marks the birth of a new country, the United Provinces.

15 years later, in 1594, out of the harbor of Texel three ships, one from Amsterdam, one of Enkhuizen, the third Zealand. The expedition is led by Willem Barentsz. There will be two more in the same objective: to discover a passage to India, passing north of Eurasia.

Needless to say, these expeditions failed, even if they have the merit of exploring the coast of Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya. The third (1596-1597) has failed even so it resulted in the loss of ships, ground by ice, an impromptu winter on the coast of Nova Zembla, and returned in a rowboat in which Barentsz passes from life to death.

But what remains of these expeditions is the control of the northern seas, totally abandoned by the Portuguese and English explorers, and extremely strong links with Northern Europe. It is on this basis that develops the Dutch power, not only for whaling: the seventeenth th century, Amsterdam is the largest European market for naval artillery, even though the Provinces United have virtually no steel industry - the famous cannon Dutch as archeology underwater fished everywhere are Scandinavian or Russian manufacture.

After the "glorious revolution" of 1688, which saw the arrival on the throne of England Stadtholder United Provinces, the northern tradition follows. I will return one day to the importance of contacts in Scandinavia and Russia in the first industrialization of Britain, which began in the late seventeenth century ^e precisely. From our point of view French, we easily overlook the historical weight of these regions, probably because we're not particularly tempted to spend our vacation - well, I do, but that's another story. * * *

Illustrations: cover Ice jam, shipments of Willem Barentsz (1594-1597) , text prepared and presented by Xavier de Castro Chandeigne / UNESCO 1996; hunting scene whales in the Arctic (1700), Scheepvart Museum, Amsterdam.

Cubefield Cheats That Work On Facebook

Factory / Dealer-yard

Two instances of what we statisticians call the secondary sector: the factory site. A factory is a place of work created in one place for a while undefined but preferably relatively long. A site is only temporary - after it ends, it ceases to be site and another site will open probably aileurs. In a plant, different parts of the production process are distributed in space, the foundry, painting, fitting ... On a construction site, the "trades" will follow in the same place, preferably in the right order - laborer, bricklayer, carpenter, roofer, plasterer, etc.. From a factory produced objects out there, then it must leave the shipyard to deliver its purpose ...

short, different title, construction and factory are not in opposition, but in duality - two different methods of organizing human labor. My presentation this afternoon seminar Master was about what happens when it's both a factory under construction.

Developments in the foundry of Ruelle, 1786-1826, according to an article in the Revue Maritime et Coloniale , March 1870

I'm not going to redo all the speech - a little too long, as usual, and largely improvised anyway - but that's the general idea. From 1786 to 1806, then again in the 1820s (but it comes out of my topic), the cannon foundry located at the Navy Lane (Charente) undergoes a series of major redesign, with new buildings, destruction of others, a comprehensive redevelopment of the course River, etc.. - Forging cannon built in 1753 in a former paper mill turns into an establishment of a new type: a large smelter. But

During construction, the sale continues : work began in 1788 but then shelved until the outbreak of war in 1792, after that, the resume work hard just because we need guns for war, so there is no question of interrupting production. Therefore coexist in the same space and plant starts - each with their workers, their materials, their direction. All these beautiful people are walking on foot on occasion: "Entrepreneur of the melting of guns took to the casting of the sand for mortar for masonry of the new oven," says contractor work.

Result: a case interesting duality factory / building site; and the origin of three tonnes of highly detailed source on the history of the foundry. The foot, when the subject is that we propose to treat for his memory M2.

PS: Nathalie Montel's book on the Suez Canal (I will discuss one of these days) is particularly inspiring about the notion of site as a specific mode of organization of work - and therefore subject to history of technology . The intro especially is like damn everything and helped me to conceptualize things a little.

Playing With Pierced Nipples

Fashoda or scramble for Africa

few years ago, I accompanied my beautiful at the British Library - which was still in the walls of the British Museum, it does not date from yesterday - and, having nothing particular to do there, I had made up his mind to go round the bibliography on an episode evoking vague memories of school textbooks: the case Fashoda. What I knew: that there battled the British colonial ambitions, directed along the axis from Cairo to Cape Town, and French, seeking to establish a cross from the Atlantic to Djibouti. I thought I knew it was going in the late nineteenth century th, but that was about all.

What I read on the subject I learned a lot about what was the conquest of Africa by Europe at that time. short summary. * * *

Principal route of the expedition Marchand, Loango to Djibouti, according to Marc MICHEL.

The Franco-English Fashoda date of autumn 1899, but the expedition had been gone for three years. The scramble for effective monitoring European colonies in Africa had it, started around 1875 and accelerating in the 1880s. Since 1893, the Colonies have an Assistant Secretary of State: the colonial empire takes shape within the administration. And without that we ever decided clearly what the goals and limitations of this policy since the fall of the Jules Ferry government on the matter of Tonkin (1885), these are subjects that are avoided. Shipments in small committee will decide in the halls of the Department of the Navy or War, later the Colonial. A "colonial party" organized, but nothing to do with a political party but rather a pressure group bringing together personalities favor colonization.

In 1893, the group began to formulate plans for a shipment Congo (on which France has operations since the voyages of Savorgnan Brazza) to the Nile in the Sudan today. This territory had been under Anglo-Egyptian control - that is controlled by Britain under the nominal sovereignty of the Sultan of Cairo - but they were expelled in 1883 by a violent uprising combining radical Islam and slavery interests (the Arabs Sudan then being the main suppliers of the slave trade by the Red Sea, the only one still thriving). The French plan was to exploit the situation to settle in the Nile upstream of the raised area (State the Mahdi), to negotiate if possible alliance with the Mahdist, and use this position to renegotiate with England the dominion of Egypt - even in the craziest version of the project, checked by dam the Nile. What was hydrologically absurd, but it had impressed the politicians: we reason about half white cards in the abstract, with big blow "as is" and "must that ". * * *

The project behind, according to the political crisis: it is full Dreyfus affair. End 1896, an infantry captain in the Navy, Merchant, manages to convince the Government to entrust the mission with very limited number of French and in his luggage, a steam gunboat kit that will be raised first tributaries AGREEMENT ON Nile - the matter will be conducted smoothly.

You actually have more than two years of hell to reach the small fort of Fashoda. In particular, the famous tributary of the Nile, we imagined aiséments broad and navigable, are invaded by the Suddha, a form of floating vegetation qiu verritables dams - it takes almost digging a channel while moving. Region was devastated by madhiste, so that the food shortage ... The small stone's throw from the Congo Basin and the Nile Basin is not so easy to cross the field.

However, the British government response: General Kitchener command the armies of the Sultan of Egypt, he was Deputy British reinforcements and he led a blitzkrieg against the Mahdist. The discovery of bullets in the French timber ship captured it confirms the presence of French people - including the proposed alliance with the rebellion was apparently misfired. A month later, in September 1898, he was to Fashoda. Tension is at its bridges between France, where the political crisis deepens, and England, which mobilizes the Navy ...

And finally, the voltage drops. The second Marchand returned to France with the report of his head, down the Nile with the English: The journey lasts only two weeks ... Presumably, this disproportion between the travel time of the expedition and this one has made politicians realize the project innanité! The bulk of the expedition returned by Djibouti, on the track of the mission which would strengthen Bonchamps but had grown tired of waiting, the border is drawn on the basis of the previous situation. Any this case, there is not much - a vague resentment that will be exploited excessively by Vichy and confirmation of French domination on the east of the current CAR. * * *

But it is an episode so characteristic of colonization: a decision without debate democratic projects based on a smoky approximate geography, well, not the slightest idea about what will territories and conquered by the magic powers of the competition between the conquest becomes an end in itself.

is this kind of operation that is twisted born territorial dominion of Europeans on almost all of Africa: 70 years of this episode is called colonization. Throughout the remainder of that period, we sought to answer the question that had not posed at the outset: what for. Let's : decolonization, it is also a waiver of an answer. * * *

Main sources used:

Marc MICHEL Mission Marchand, 1895-1899, Paris-La Haye, Mouton, 1972.

Roger Glenn Brown, Fashoda Reconsidered , The Impact of Domestic Politics on French Policy in French Africa, 1893-1898 , Baltimore, John Hopkins Press, 1970.

I also read The Race to Fashoda : Colonialism and African Resistance , DL Lewis, but I have my doubts about the seriousness of the work. Otherwise, various texts of times, but the two titles mentioned above seems more than sufficient for those whom it may concern.

Why Is My Face Red And Hot After Eating

Serial

These last Friday, I started an activity to which I declined for several years: the systematic analysis of a series intimidating by its size. These are big books (see below cons ... volume 3) having, by quarter, copies of letters sent by the Department of the Navy regarding the manufacture of artillery.

In fact, it's a bit more complicated than that: the series begins under the Convention, in year III, before departments are restored - they are just after the election of the Management Executive in Brumaire Year IV. The first two volumes are therefore correspondence commissions departments that prefigure an IV, but in my case, it does not change much. As the Republican calendar, but rather a simplification: we made it very quickly and finally, one wonders why they did not keep, the gallant calendar ... A little mental math to find out if you are under the snow or heat wave, and we found it very well.

What is new for me is the scale of work: methodically go through thousands and thousands of pages, extract relevant information, knowing that we take stuff that will not be used and that one passes in whom there may need one day - at least we try to remember it's there.

I do not quantitative history, and it is therefore not complete a database, hoping to collect enough data to have consistent statistical significance. I'm not saying this is not a valid approach: simply, this is not mine. I try to find connections, qualitative elements to understand the processes of production, the relationship between government and producers of artillery, unspoken of these reports ... More specifically, I photograph what interests me and I noted a few words on a page, story to find my kids. Needless to say I made a ton of photos: I have two batteries for the camera, three or four memory cards, and it runs! Say a picture every two or three minutes on average, is also the time to read the documents. And own the minute is that these are documents of an exclusively internal: the clerks do not necessarily treat their writing, not to mention that they often use the register of minutes as a draft before writing the letter itself . Of the four or five scripts that I found in these records, there is one that is almost unreadable, two or three rather readable and perfect - but it is one that returns the least often. Luckily, the least readable mainly deals with issues that do not concern me. * * *

What makes this methodical work, as opposed to cherry picking (sometimes fairly systematic, though) which was my dominant mode is that it can hang up a thread that documents we had met also to reintegrate them in a broader frame. The drawback, of course, is how long it takes: I'm one or two volumes per session, two and a half by making a very big day, and there are four per year. Knowing that it takes at least that I consult the first eight years series is not won!

Marlin Model 1870 30-30

Siegfried, or the twilight of an idea

I found the other day on a bookseller's stall, where I have my habits this book whose author and title caught my eye: Andrew Siegfried Suez and Panama routes world, Paris, Armand Colin, 1940. I did not read in full but I have spotted some interesting passages.

Andre Siegfried's life coincides with the era of modern colonialism: he was born in 1875, while accelerating the conquest of Africa, and died in 1959, while most French colonies preparing to become independent &Eactute; States. It is therefore not surprising that shares an idea that seems obvious to many: the superiority of the white race. It is not a fool: he sees clearly that the colonial order is challenged, it will probably not continue indefinitely in a state:

[...] and exotic breeds, awakened by us from a long sleep, like Sleeping Beauty, in turn claim their independence. The

"by us" is of course his weight in peanuts, but they are not so many who are aware of the reality of this aspiration. That's what makes the interest of the work of Siegfried: he thinks inside the system that the superiority of the white race is obvious while watching the rise of a dynamic that will eventually destroy this system: is the twilight of an idea.

Then suddenly, he tinkers certainties parts:

The technique is learned: it is with reason that many of Europe's competitors can boast to walk for European machines as well as their inventors. But run the machines is very little: what matters is to have invented, and then refine them, to renew and adapt to changing conditions. Such creative genius has so far been the privilege of the white race, even some section cettte race, and it is the first condition for maintaining our material civilization at a high level.

It is easy to sneer, and yet such was until very recent years the dominant attitude of the West towards China: they produce, we, we design, if China is the world's workers, let us to be the senior manager. The reasoning is the same.

And if this privilege inventiveness had to be shared? Remain the ultimate privilege, namely that of directing:

The qualities of this order in the conduct of a case are precisely those that the public does not see, and they fall into a sense of moral as well as the technique. How many mistakes, for example, in the Judgement of the worker, the importance of the function of the boss! This genius, who was administrative in the sense highest of the word, is the most authentic civilization, and would decline quickly if we pretended to do without.

The sneer is more difficult to remember, however, note that the concept of administrative culture is not an illusion: the chaos that has engulfed the Congo - Kinshasa after the hasty departure of the Belgian colonizers is proof. But to make it a privilege of the "white race" there are far ...

But here it is: we got rid of that cumbersome concept - turning point, extremely fast, we are still too close for us to be able to make history. In a world where he plans change, Siegfried tries to find reasons for maintaining the "supremacy", which seems an indisputable fact - otherwise, he concluded in the last lines of the book, the universal decline is assured:

Should be otherwise in the future is that the solutions of general interest, inspired by the great Roman politics, had given way in the world, to a fragmentation which civilization would survive with difficulty.

Addendum: writing this note has taken longer than expected, I found in the Monde on Tuesday a very interesting article on the launch of the latest container giant CMA-CGM, which announces the launch of future super-door containerships of 11,000 TEUs (twenty foot equivalent: a container the size of a tractor-trailer counts as two TEUs). These boats are designed and manufactured by Hyundai, Korea, and they also make it completely superseded the two-channel transoceanic which Siegfried was the hub of world trade.

As for the collapse of civilization, we are still waiting.

Babies Choking On Plegm

Tech / technology

I receive every three months, my issue of the journal Technology and Culture published by the Society for the History of Technology - the leading international publication (though mostly American, it admittedly) in the field of history of art.

But then, history of technology or History of Technology? 'd Better agree, you say. And specifically, in the delivery that I received on Monday morning to find several articles on the semantics of the word technology, in particular, Eric Schatzberg an article entitled " Technik Comes to America, Changing Meanings of Technology Before 1930" (T & C , vol. 47, No. 3, July 2006, pp. ; 486-512). It aims to explain precisely the gap between English and other European languages the word "technology" - the latter having practically substituted, in English, the term "technical , "since the 1930s. Very interesting article, for those who have not have the courage to read it, here's a summary Approximate. From

Technik to technology

The term "technology" is German invention, used for the first time by Johann Beckmann, a professor at the venerable University of Göttingen, who published in 1777 a Anleitung zur Technologie ( Introduction to technology), it is the science devoted to the study of technical processes, the same way that the mineralogy is the science that studies minerals. It is the sense he keeps throughout the nineteenth century e: for example how we should include the name of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded in 1861. It is a rare term, although some works qualify themselves as "technology": they are general views of what was then called industrial arts, to the attention of famous public grown more than practitioners.

According Schnatzberg, the transfer of meaning occurs in the early years of the twentieth century and ^e originates not in the concept of technology as used by Beckman in thought but German Technik at the end of the nineteenth century e, where it is not far to study the manufacturing processes but to express its own logic to correction in industrial, embodied in the culture of engineering. The technical Gallicism not appropriate (English reserving to the gesture of the artist), authors in political economy continued reflection on the Technik come, faute de mieux, to reclaim the term of technology: this is the case a post-Marxist thinker steeped in social Darwinism, Thorstein Veblen, who wants to see the technology instinctive and positive momentum of humanity, however, likely to be diverted by what he calls financial institutions to form capitalism.

The term was taken by his successors, who abandoned the Marxist critique of industrial capitalism and technology are the word a synonym of technical progress, the advance of human domination over the material world.

And we, then?

the Arctic is not interested in further developments of the word, let alone the tension on the term "technology" in other languages, eg French. Yet there is much to say the contrast between the words "technical" and "technology" is at the heart of the debate on the technical facts that grows in France in the 60s and 70s - even the title is a collection of essays edited by Jacques Guillerme in 1973. The period is, indeed, marked by the linguistic turn and srtucturalisme: we scaffold loves his thoughts on a variety of critical pairs, lexicon, syntax, metaphor / metonymy, builder / engineer (I will come back from that one) ... and, therefore, technical / engineering, for those who deign to be interested in these subjects.

In this case, contrary to what was observed in the English language, the word "technology" is strictly confined to that of a type of discourse on scientific technical processes. The immediate and decisive influence of such technology on process improvement techniques seem to have been regarded as self-evident, which does not seem so obvious. Suddenly, the pitfalls are numerous: gradisme enough primary would see a technological era of applied science productionse to replace an era of routine technical ignorant; determinism to the punch for which the birth of a technological discourse leads, almost automatically, the industrial era - the introduction of technology and technology of Jacques Guillerme significant lack of caution on both fronts. Finally, taking as its starting point the opposition technique / technology, we are likely, as the English inn, to eat what we had brought: the organic link that postulates the sense that one has known the word "technology" between scholarly knowledge and technical change. Link that deserves further discussion.

Technology, Technology

And yet the language has evolved. In French and English, the term has evolved for the vast majority of people, the term no longer refers to technology or know a discourse on the art but a consistent set of technical devices. Evolution is not unusual, see psychology. Usage is even perfectly Official: it was not so long as in my profession, the ministry we basins on the "new information technologies and communication" - the top was to be charge of ICT mission very well on the cards. Until you realize that it had nothing much new.

course, one can reject this understanding of technology as anglicism - it is part. Remains that betting big on the opposition lexical technique / technology, historians and thinkers speaking techniques take a risk, increasing: that of being understood or of their contemporaries, or their foreign colleagues. Or devote, to justify their use of the term, a time that could probably be better spent.

I Think Mytoddler Has Genital Warts

Frequency Could be better

Starting tomorrow, I insist on adding an entry in this blog every Friday - because Friday is the day I am a historian.

To say what? Reading notes, reflections, lines of work ... As usual, you know. Your feedback will of course welcome.

What Does This Statue Reveal About Greek Value

a while since I wanted to write a little note on the historiography recent French revolution - something like a "contingent history of the Revolution, which does not seek to prove the inevitability of the sequences, but instead emphasizes the chaotic events on the contingencies on the competition between rival powers, etc.. It would find Jean-Clément Martin, for example, or the new edition of Volume 2 of the New history of contemporary France in Points Seuil, where Roger Dupuy replaces a volume of Mark Bouloiseau actually dated in its analysis.

crashing down in rack my bookstore lannionaise usual, a little biography of Louis XVI by Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret I expected, given the reputation of the author, to be able to complete this series - the figure of King and its ambiguities n ' is in fact not without importance in the new approach of the Revolution, far beyond the cliches about the ineptitude of Louis XVI by tossing events.

Alas, alas, alas, three times: the book is mediocre at best, a sort of Mallet and Isaac without the panache. A work order, probably written in a few weeks, and whose author has not clearly not bother to proofread: sentences back as shown in various chapters, commas are unreadable until the sarabande certain phrases ... The most beautiful: the last paragraph of the text can be found sporting a mysterious sentence and totally out of context: The kings of France are represented in color. It took me a while to understand that the sentence should be part of an earlier version of the legend of the Bourbon genealogy presented in the Annex, on the next page ...

Content is sadly in keeping. Enough to make a mediocre conference for any inter-university age, perhaps, but a book? A historian confirmed not only honored to publish this kind of thing. And the French publishers show once again their ineptitude. It's a pity given the smallness of the place given to the story (true) on the book market, a bad book published in condemning the lack good book could have been done seem to instead.

Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret Louis XVI, 1754-1793: The reign interrupted , Tallandier / RMN, 2002 (reprinted in Pocket, 2006).

Watch Pokemon Diamond And Pearl Raw

Foundry

When is a historian of technology, it is all the time - even in cemeteries. Let me explain.

I was recently at Le Mans for a few days, as you probably know if you read my blog daily. I took the opportunity to make a visit that I am not normal, that of the grave of my grandmother, at Holy Cross cemetery on the heights east of the city. I was not returned since the funeral, in 1984 and thus had a vague idea of the topography - it is not too connected with the cult of the dead in the family.

Still, as I paced the aisles to find the right location (it is a tiny cemetery, thankfully) when I came across two neighbors famous father and son:

Amedee Bollee (father), " bell-founder, engineer, 1844-1917

Amedee Bollee (son), "inventor and industrialist, a pioneer of the automobile", 1867-1927

The Bollée are known to have, first, having the idea of using thermal energy for the transport of passengers by road. This idea has been subsequently, as we know, some success - even though the attention of the State and the so-called big business was entirely focused on the railways . By the way, we only asked to be able to bring people and goods to the nearest station, the development of the secondary network was considerably closer - to the point where walking and horse carts were to be more than sufficient for these trips . That's why we (Sigaut Francis, I think) speaks inrush Automotive, unknown or almost constituted authorities.

This burst is, I believe, the result of the maturation of a professional environment, that of small and medium mechanics. These are small workshops, small capital, or polytechnic, or Engineers, but the dynasties of craftsmen in the suburbs of major cities and towns (Le Mans, Belfort ...). Emerge from their studios bikes, cars, and even, when two bicycle manufacturers from North Carolina, the aircraft. It is still not there!

What struck me seeing these headstones is the link between foundry and the new mechanics. Not surprising when you think about - the manufacture of a combustion engine requires many castings of body roll driving motor through connecting rods. But was it well done as this art was central to the progress of mechanics?

After all, consider the England of the eighteenth century in the great upheaval of the time, that of the steam engine is the ability to flow and drill large bodies of cast iron cylinders which allowed Newcomen and Watt and Boulton, transform ideas into industrial successes ...

The Foundry central point of the two industrial revolutions? Why not!

9.5 Evinrude Cooling System

Fortune Sea, 2: A question

continue our little tour of insults related by the correspondence of the Department of the Navy, preserved in Series B funding navy veterans at the National Archives. I started this series with the tragic, the fatal drowning and harrowing details bonus, but the perils of the sea, it can also be cons-time, rants, volleys of profanity and bad mood . Example.

Delay, or New York - Le Havre via Lorient and Perros-Guirec

It course will appear to those who know me that these are the places mentioned in this letter that caught my attention. Full text, with my comments in brackets

February 3.
Monseigneur le Marechal de Castries, Minister and Secretary of State with the Department of the Navy.

[Yes, strictly speaking, there is no "minister of the navy" in the old regime, he is a minister and Secretary of State (that to say a member of both the king's council and board of mails, top) which is have supported this branch of the royal administration.]

lord, I

the honor to inform Your Lordship that, arrived in New York on the eighteenth of this month in the harbor of Port Louis, where I wet night with the king's ship The Courier Europe I command, Mr. Thevenard sent me back to writing about sailing on the morrow the tide to get to Harbour Grace, order I executed the following day by pairing nineteen.

[Port Louis, Port Louis is next to Lorient Harbour Grace, is of course the port of Le Havre at the entrance of the Seine, a ship, the English packet-boat is a fast ship of modest size in charge of transportation of mail. You feel the joy of the crew to leave the idea of having just arrived for a tour of Britain in winter.]

Since then I've had winds from east and north east east, which forced me to run in the round edges and often reefed the topsails, but a pretty strong gale from the same party last night taking me to the point of not being able to just wear the hijab, I decided to relax at anchor on the Costa de perros Britain, ten miles east of the Isle of stockings, which I was then.

[Of course, tacking in the breeze in January, we did not really want to be there, even if a small boat like that was certainly more gifted than to ship three bridges for this kind of sport. The choice of the bay of Perros can surprise, the bay of Morlaix, well sheltered, being just off the island of Batz - but the input can be dangerous in rough weather, especially as the markup was not as complete as today. The bay of Perros is relatively well protected and very easy Access: There is a logic. Especially since there are issues of crew ...]

My crew has been very low by the number of young people fifteen and sixteen years I've been given, is the most bad condition, there are eight of the post surgeon, some are attacked, where the stone, where the flow of blood, where injured in collision at the point of not render any service whatsoever. I am therefore obliged to pay me in bad weather forces that I can have, and do not do what I do, if I was well armed sailors.

[Bah, that he might be in trouble, the Stouvin commander, not to arrive where we waiting - then suddenly, you have to find reasons ... Eight sailors sick undermine the smooth running of the boat confirms that it is in any case a small boat that is, restricted to the crew.]

I beg you, Monseigneur, of be convinced that soon he will favor any time, I will neglect nothing to get to my destination.

I am with great respect
Monsignor

Your very humble and very obedient servant
Stouvins.

What I like in this letter is that the commander intends to curse in his dugout, against the order fool you gave him, against this dreadful weather, the crew Galapian cons and the cons avoinée lame and he can be caught from his superiors. It does not really want to sail with Captain Stouvin, even on The Courier Europe, dashing king's ship - but the problem does not arise, of course.

Note: This letter is not dated - well, it was the month but not this year. Castries was minister of the navy from 1780 to 1787, the paperboard B ³ contains 803 in principle documents subsequent to 1786 - But the resulting presence of several letters to the officer whose names begin with T reminds pulled a wad of personal records and incorrect arrangement thereafter. Youth Crew Evoq a time of war, where the marine reserve expériementés most (and most talented officers!) For combat units. I may venture thus the year 1783, last year the American War of Independence, which would explain the strategic importance of mail from New York.

This small pleasure of the historian: the documents that give flesh to the story we studies. It does not necessarily need, they are arranged in a corner of his memory and its files. The historian is a tinkerer like the others: "it can still serve."

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delays may lead to another

News from my dear studies: I tried these days of progress a specific point: when do we begin to recast the cast iron, for example the "throw in the mold," as said Gabriel Jars in 1765: making objects casting, cauldron Gun of 36 through the beam or the pump. Since the fourteenth century, the iron produced in blast furnaces, which means it produces what is known today about the cast, which was subsequently refined to obtain iron. If what you want, they are objects cast, the mold is placed at the foot of the blast furnace and there leads the cast during the casting. That is until the eighteenth century the only way to do so, since it knows no way to melt the iron - which is why we do not call cast iron cast but when s 'acts or molded objects pig iron for the intermediate product to refineries in English cast iron pig iron and . The term font is used, but it's green cast , ie bronze, that is: we know from the proto-history to melt, the 800 ° n ' is not hell, after all. Talk about melting a metal that was melted, it is not absurd.

A significant change occurred in England between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century: it manages to consolidate the iron, using a particular type of furnace that was used then for copper and lead: reverberatory furnace (See cons below). The iron is remelted in this way is not wrought iron, pure iron, but what is known today of casting an alloy of iron and carbon with high degree of carbon (more than 2% if I remember correctly), which lowers its melting point at 1200 °. So either pigs produced by the blast furnace, or residues of iron casting objects or old barrels or other objects they desired to recycle iron. These techniques are imported into France in the 1770s, we began to encounter the term iron foundry and therefore cast iron - since we know to produce a liquid other than in a transitional phase at the exit of the furnace.

What is curious is that this major change is very little studied. The reason for this: This new feature is closely related to another, that of coke use in blast furnaces. The fuel is from the same source (coal mine) even if the reverberatory furnace does not require its coking and, in addition, places and these men are confused, especially in Coalbrookdale, the Anglo-Welsh border ( illustration at the top of the article is to clearly see the reverberatory furnaces). And as the issue of coke, which carries with it all the heavy industry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has always worried and concerned about the historians at the forefront of technology, that of the cast (like product that could be consolidated at will) found itself largely obscured.

is what I said, a question may hide another.

Illustration: Detail of A View of the Upper Work at Coalbrookdale in the County of Salop [Shropshire], 1758, published in TS Ashton, Iron and Steel In The Industrial Revolution , Manchester University Press, 1924; Furnace for Iron Scrap Melting at Southwark (London), by RR Angerstein, 1753, published in RR Angerstein's Illustrated Travel Diary, 1753-1755 , trans. and ed. T. and P. Berg, London, Science Museum, 2001.

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Fortunes sea, 1: Industrial Heritage tragedies

lot to say on this topic I have not taken the time to say. Of books that I wanted to report some discussion that I wanted to pursue, and of course my little winks archival - all documents on which I fell and I did no real use for my research but I still want to share. Because writing of history is about making choices, doing without material because, quite simply, it does not correspond to the historical object that is sought to implement.

A remark elsewhere: one of the surest marks of the "work of scholarship" as opposed to the work of a historian is that precisely the factoids that scholar has found in its archives, he can not refrain from inflicting his readers - and, in the deplorable biography the Marquis de Montalembert published two years ago, the author can not help but share in a chapter devoted to industrial activities of the Marquis of pregnancy a woman attributes to works of the footman de Montalembert , and the amount of money paid by him to avoid prosecution.

I must admit that this is not always easy, to remember. Hence the usefulness of having a blog in which spill - and this is clearly one of the functions of this topic.

Since I work at an establishment that, from 1776 in law (and since 1755 actually) directly to the Department of the Navy, I had to sift evil series Archives of the Navy. Normal. And like a lot of these series are following the "general service" department, I find many things that have little to do with my subject, but rather are stories of this that it is customary to call fortunes sea Examples.

Tragedies

Sometimes, of course, the tragedy of the sinking. I cited the case of the seamen from the water by the monks of Saint-Mathieu, the outcome is not always as happy, as for those in distress near Dunkerque Fecamp:

S. Masson Commissioner classes in port by reporting on the sinking of a trimming BELANDRE Dunkirk, informed Bishop that the master, a foam master's son and a sailor who composed the crew, s'étoient saved on the boat that Sea that were horrible, engulfing soon after. The sailor was lost without resource; the teacher who swam superiorly grabbed his son and held him with one arm for 15 to 18 minutes, but could not prevent him from drowning. After three quarters of an hour the father managed to gain ground on the side of Senneville where he would have infallibly perished without the assistance of a few men and women who lavished all the help he needed. This man, named Bouffey emptied completely and gave him his shirt and his clothes.

Ugly, ugly. It is of course to get the ministry, for the master in question, "a small gratuity," and "reward of charity named Bouffey" - which is granted . The spirits recognize grief in a narrative topos the story of shipwreck, found in périqodiquement stories of this type until now, the unfortunate foam torn from the arms of his father by the raging waters. This does not mean it's false, but identify a topos like this can only encourage the historian to be cautious. Who will challenge the story of a grieving father? The appointed

Bouffey, meanwhile, is proof that the people of coastline, far from the wreckers as is a myth thoroughly studied by Alain Cabantous ( barbarous coasts, wreckers and coastal societies in France, 1680-1830, Fayard, 1993), know the lifesaving: give the wrecked dry clothes is actually the first thing to do, all works that address will tell you. It is there in good company, with the monks of Saint-Mathieu Avont we talked and peasants of Picardy Molière, in the previous century, who instead prefer to give their clothes get wrecked warm, naked, before a good Fire - other method recommended by all the manuals, too.

Dom Juan or The Feast of Stone , ACT II, Scene first

CHARLOTTE, PIERROT.

CHARLOTTE: Our dinse, Pierrot, you found yourself good point there.

PIERROT: Parquienne he did not do the required thickness of a éplinque Sayant Nayes they do both.

CHARLOTTE: So the gale da morning had renvarsés in March?

PIERROT: Aga, Guienne, Charlotte, I'm gonna tell it all end drait as it came, for, as they say, I have the first notice, notify the first I have them. So finally j'estions on the edge of March, me and the big Lucas, and I amused ourselves to frolic with clods of Tarra I jesquions us to test for, as you know bian, the big Lucas likes to frolic and by me I fouas frolics ditto. In frolicking thus pisque frolic there, I saw any thing away queuque gliau swarmed in, and who came as envar us by shock. I saw this fixiblement, and worse all of a sudden I saw that I could not see anything. "Hey Lucas, ç'ai I done, I think vla men who swim there. [...]" Well, Lucas, ç'ai I said, you know that we bian appelont: Vista leu will help. - No, it's me he said, they made me pardre. "Oh! So, at the end will tanquia, for short, as I sarmonné, I we have toppled in a boat, and so much worse j'avons willy nilly, that I have learned gliau, and I've done worse Cheux us by the fire, and worse they all stripped naked sant to dry, and worse there came two more OF THE SAME band, which s'equiant saved himself, and is worse Mathurine arrival there, who has made the soft eyes. Vla precisely, Charlotte, as it all happened.

[...]

CHARLOTTE: Is it still free cloth you naked, Pierrot?

PIERROT: Nannain: Avont they dressed all before us.

Neither Pierrot, nor appointed Bouffey, the medal will rescue, and for good reason. At Bouffey, we give some books; Pierrot, a scraped (Act II, Scene III):

PIERROT: Er. (Don Juan gives him a slap.) Testigué! do not hit me. (Another slap.) Oh! jernigué! (Another slap.) Ventrequé! (Another slap.) Palsanqué! Morquenne! bian that is not to beat people, and that is not the reward of v's have saved Estre Naye.

That's true!

(Illustration: The document archives, national archives, funds navy veterans, B 1 99, folio 235, and the king leaves Minister, 1784 . Excerpt from Dom Juan by Molière , according www.site-moliere.com .)

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[This message was actually intended for my daily column. I therefore duplicates there, waiting to post here a few nautical mishaps recently found in the archives.]

day seminar all day tomorrow on the theme: "what place to work in the industrial heritage? "I love the question, although in this case I would have preferred to keep the program "How to kick ass Premier haughty." Well, at worst, I sneak away for an hour or two to go pounding the pavement and I will return. But seriously, the question is interesting, in this era where everything becomes heritage at risk of turning the country into a vast museum. Obviously, one can ask the question another way: the heritage in question is there still anything to industrial since it is no longer a place of work?

A factory on the banks of the Somme, A mine in May 2005.

Let me be clear. I was one of those that the destruction of factories in Billancourt put pissed off, because the city want to delete all traces of production activities, it is not healthy. There is a tendency to hide the industry, something a little dirty, away from the city, trying to forget about it - our eco-friendly Parisians, who design their alleged traffic plans disregard artisans and industrial who still produce things in their hands, is also a variety of phenomenon.

But on the other hand, if these buildings become, as is often the case, n-th place socio-cultural, official or not (the refrigerators to Paris, the foundry at Le Mans, Le Lieu Unique in Nantes ...), do not you do much the same thing by diverting the direction, leaving behind those walls that were there for a purpose and that goal was an industrial activity? These buildings

deserts or socio-culturalized, not industry, is a fossil of industry - because a real industrial site, it changes all the time. We built a new studio here, where we install the machine tool recently delivered, and we need to get trains there, and then we will increase the height of the chimney ... It turns out that for my paper, I study a workshop especially a particular plant. This building still exists and is the oldest of the plant. I did incidentally Preview, and have never been able to photograph: the plant, built for the naval guns in 1753, is now preparing to arm the new class of frigates that Franco-Italian announced last winter - top secret, no pictures. What is certain is that the building in question, called today Casters, he is long gone, has repeatedly changed functions without ever having exactly all those destined to him. That is an industrial site alive. How think in terms of heritage there?

One of these days I'll explain how, by failure to develop the industry as the subject of a story, they killed one of the oldest societies of non-ferrous France. The Pen

salute you.

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Nantes, flour and coal-fired boilers

As I said earlier , I just drew a blank at the National Archives, at least on what I was looking for. Because it is a little problem: there is always something in the archives, except to put the utmost reluctance. The trick is how to help focus these findings more than a few seconds - otherwise we would not come out.

On the other hand, it is not a historian if you're not curious, and if we stumbled upon the plans of a strange one which had never heard of, it would be a shame not not look more closely.

But then, after these preliminary laborious, I return to my title: What can we do well at Nantes in 1785 with flour and coal stoves? A bit early for either of Choco BN, even a little early for breakfast Lu (the specialist will give us no doubt the date of invention). Add the enigma that this property should be directed to the use of the Royal Navy. Mystery and gumdrop.

If I had not had the plans, I would not have been more advanced than that. But there is a letter, entitled "ovens flour" and signed by a certain Millet, Nantes, April 22, 1785, he is a legend, titled as follows:

PLAN an oven with three floors each floor having two rows of shelves which are common flours or grains you want to do dry.

I like the titles of the eighteenth century, it has another face that American Vertigo or I do not know what nonsense. That said, the documents tell us what it is, but not really what's the point. They teach us that the Boilers (located on ground floor) can provide a temperature of 60-70 degrees (Reaumur, I suppose - or 75 to 88 ° C) in pipes; oven is the only way flour 24; more than these stoves can be run "with coals that would be a big enough economy." We further explained that:

side A & side B show that close and open lanes at will by which the steamed flour will go to the floor of the first floor designed by Marks joists, & when it is cooled it will descend by the traps in the shops on the ground floor to be embarillée.

Ha ha! Here we are. Clear at once that the term does not designate an oven in this context humid heat but maintained a moderate heat for a considerable time. And now we understand: flour, rather it keeps evil - that's why we kept the traditional wheat grain, making it the grind As they were needed. But on a boat, there is no mill: therefore, we must take the flour. So the packaging in sealed barrels. So it is completely dry when you put it in a box, otherwise the remedy will be worse than the disease.

is where it becomes the story and not just a funny document. Western civilization had somehow developed a number of practices to help stretch food to eat all year - but these practices do not meet the needs specific long-term sea voyage. And suddenly, the modern conservation techniques appear (except of course those that are related to the cold chain): tin cans, that is covered with a tin coating, for example, and even soup tablets: a document of 1783 is concerned there are 4000 to Rochefort threatens to lapse.

A note: Nantes is clearly an important focus for these activities: in addition to this facility (which I do not know if it was done), there are very important early tinplate. An idle question: Is this the origin of the vocation of Nantes biscuit that we mentioned earlier?

On study day "technical systems" of March 4, Francis Sigaut regret that we do not make the history of the corkscrew. That is already a beginning of the history of flour box.

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Monks and usefulness Marine

I mentioned recently Lighthouse Pointe Saint-Mathieu and his monastery, a young reader Rome (Italy) was even observed that "We used to pray against shipwrecks, now, we light the lights." If I think a document that I fell the other day in the archives looking for something else, it does stop there:

National Archives, funds navy veterans, B 2 390

This is the copy on record of a dispatch sent by the Minister of Marine in La Roche -Amon, Archbishop of Rheims and chairman of the board regulars - Committee appointed by Louis XV in 1766 following the wishes of the archbishop of Toulouse, Lomenie de Brienne, to reform the French regular clergy. Transcript for those paleography in miniature on screen does not try:

M. Duke Archbishop of Rheims.
has Versaille February 10, 1769.

The account given to me, sir, any kind of relief that people [scratched: the Crew] sea rescued from the wreck of the King's Gabarre Dorothy who was lost to Point St. Mathieu fired Religious [scratched: Abbey] the monastery of that name you undertake to observe that their home is its location in the most useful in cases of this kind, and that eliminating it is threatened, since it is unfounded can maintain the number of religious demands that the King in each monastery, would be regarded as an unfortunate event for all seafarers If you think, sir, that this consideration may be excepted from the general rule the house in question, I Seray much obliged to propose conservation and kindly inform me of the party be taken in this regard.

I have the honor of being the most perfect attachment, Sir, yours & c.

few notes: First, it ignores the nature of the relief it is. The monks have they rolled up their clothes to go fish the sea? Or did they merely offer a first step in their prayer and a second hot wine? I would not delve into the archives of the Finistère département (who probably collected the archives of the said monastery, in the end) to see that. Second remark: after a few years (1782 I think), we decided to build a lighthouse there, which leaves pener that the request was not heard. If indeed it was written for be heard, or simply to please the prior of the house in question.

course, all this has absolutely nothing to do with the subjects mind. Anyway, since I had it on hand ...

( And in other news: samples sent by a doctor Tréguier the Department of the Navy in 1786 was not really marble. Tréguier From marble, must say, it would have been a scoop. )

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scientific rigor

extract the History of the Royal Academy of Sciences for the year 1767 , in which I was looking for something else:

Only with the greatest attention, and after the most careful scrutiny, we are entitled, in physical research, relying on what is believed to have seen.

Hist. Acad. Roy. Sci. 1767 (1770), p.43.

What's this? The presentation of the memory of Mr. serene entitled "the true sex of those known hermaphodites " of course!

(That does not help me find the memory Duhamel on steel Ruffec in Angouleme, which I picked a manuscript copy in the Archives yesterday. Anyway, this one was worth quoting, I think.)

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Schmingénieur

As well known, the following day I head a cap of computer network administrator or a cap of history student. Although I majored in history of technology, it is not so often that the two may coincide. And yet ...

And yet, in seminars, symposia and publications on the history of technology, particularly in France, we talk constantly of engineers, on the other hand, I count the responses to tender where I figure it cost the day of engineer - cheaper than a project manager or consultant, but more than a technician. Incidentally, on my payroll, it is marked "engineer," is to say if the engineer there.

What connection between all these engineers, and with Vauban and Belidor I mentioned here or there ?

I confess I do not have to answer this question. And I add to this admission that despite its quality, the book of Helen cylinder authoritative on the issue ( Glory engineers. The technical intelligence from the sixteenth to eighteenth century , Albin Michel, 1993) can not quite convince myself that because we have this word, there is a coherent historical object behind.

At first, I believe it, there is a military engineer - the man of genius in the sense that we hear in the staffs in charge of the siege works and, conversely , fortification. It is becoming increasingly important throughout modern times, when war ceases to be a matter of heroic charges in open country to be reduced to a matter of seats and seats, peaking with large and expensive affair of the reign of Louis XIV, the construction of a line of fortresses on the borders of the Kingdom. The engineer is essentially a specialist static, leaving those other problems of Galilee on kinematics and dynamics. Obviously, he is forced to address questions of hydraulics, for example: not worth building a fortress if we die of thirst. This is evident in the books of Belidor and field-at Nine Brissach and elsewhere (the cons, water supply to Briançon).

But it is far from omnipotent engineer of the nineteenth century. How will be the one to the other? How he became an engineer at a point so obvious, and especially in France, the figurehead of technical progress?

A working hypothesis, surely simplistic: in France, the royal corps of engineers (military genius so), I believe, the first body art of the state to receive a strict territorial organization in 1693 an organization with branches in 23 subdivided into chiefdoms recent being the responsibility of a Chief Engineer (see Langin, Engineering the French Revolution, p.81). So, when at the Regency and Louis XV it is concerned with organizing the Ponts-et-Chaussées, the same model and the same designation that prevail, and that the transferred Rees, in the last years of the Ancien Regime, the new body of mine.

We know that engineers Mines (but also those of the Ponts-et-Chaussées, regarding in particular the railways) were given the task of organizing and encouraging the import of the industrial revolution English in France - forgive me the shortcut a bit forced. And, during the Nineteenth century, one begins to see blacksmiths, recognized as such in their province, to be called "civil engineers" in Paris - in the case of Combescot, Forge-Lédrier Savignac, Yvon studied by Lamy. The new glory of the engineer began, which culminated in the Act of July 10, 1934 on the issuance and use of the title of graduate engineer .

This model is it obsolete now? I think, I want to show the pay scale I mentioned at the beginning - indeed, if I was explaining to my American friends I'm engineer (Dipl. failing that I'm not), chances are they think I'm a locomotive engineer. But like Don Quixote believed in chivalry long after it has lost all relevance, some continue to see time in the engineering (and in the schools of the same name) the essential framework of industry, economy and , for that matter, society itself ...

(Illustration: detail from the frontispiece of Science engineers of Belidor, edition of 1729, according Gallica and photo of yours truly, Briancon, July 2005)

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Engineer Bridges and causeways

Purchased earlier in this book in a bookseller promising title: Viaduct Erdre. Treaty practice for construction of steel bridges arched by Mr. Ch. Dupuy, Chief Engineer of Roads and Bridges in charge of the Company's service of Orleans, with the assistance of Mr. Stephen Lauras, civil engineer, alumnus of Central School, assistant engineer at the Orleans Company, Paris, Dunod Publisher, 1879.

Save the date: 1879, three years before the commencement of construction of the viaduct Garabit by Gustave Eiffel. We caught the monumental work of someone who represents the engineer-hero of the late nineteenth century rather than the obscure MM calculations. Dupuy and Lauras. It is true that the viaduct Erdre is much more modest - the main span arch measuring 95m, 165m to Garabit cons (of 564m in all) and is about twenty feet above the water, what is there so much less dramatic than the mountains cantaloupes. The viaduct Erdre is also certainly not the first of its kind - after all, we built a viaduct arch over the Severn, beams cast iron and not exactly a century earlier. The authors did not, moreover, that claim, only to publish the calculations they had employed so that their successors can enjoy this experience.

From calculations: it is what it is. I admit I vaguely hoped, by buying this little book on the Seine, find some implementation plan, perhaps even prints of the work. But the content is this: formulas, tables of values to be used in such formulas; few diagrams to explain these calculations (see page among others, shown more than average and it is taken into account the constraints of expansion). The lover of beautiful drawings (I am) is disappointed, but not the historian of technology, here is a magnificent example of what became the science of engineering in the aftermath of the Second Empire.

This science, he had been born with a view to Belidor Bernard Forest in the 1720s (see Langin, Conserving the Enlightenment , Chapter 9), which sought to establish rules for calculating the construction of fortifications. "The structures, he said, must draw their strength of workmanlike rather that the abundance of materials. She is now in full possession of his means, to the point of feeling able to accurately predict the behavior of a structure of a new type. The material is indeed suitable for calculation, with beams that work only in the direction of the length - to the point that one wonders if the success of the structures "eiffelliennes" does not come primarily from their adaptation for engineering calculations.

Science Engineering is a science of calculation and prediction. But it is also an experimental science: this project is a bench trial, where the measures taken have confirmed the a priori calculations . And, of course,

Whatever this respect the views of manufacturers, we believe that the discussion in which we delivered demonstrates the confidence that should inspire the arch span. Certainly study projects is not difficult, and the results which lead calculations are maximums which, in practice, will never be achieved.

and Laura Dupuy, op. cit. , p.78.

Bridge Erdre may well be a bit forgotten, if indeed it still exists (and there Nantais in the room? This must be the bridge Jonelière, just left of the highway bridge Beaujeoire going to Chapelle-sur-Erdre) - but it represents an example of the engineering triumph of the late nineteenth century. It is not nothing anyway!

[NES, January 30: A nice reader Nantes confirms that it is the bridge Jonelière but was destroyed by the Germans in 1944 and rebuilt in concrete in 1948 . His comment see below.]

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Two interesting books

stumbled into a library two interesting books:

Janis Langin, Conserving the Enlightment, French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution , MIT Press, 2004, 532pp.

The title is a response to Ken Alder, Engineering the French Revolution , who claimed to find a quality intrinsic to the emergence of revolutionary figure of the engineer in the eighteenth century France. Janis Langin from a subject he knows well: the controversy between the Corps of Engineers and the Marquis de Montalembert on the ideas of the latter in terms of fortification. It organizes around a story of this episode of the thought of military engineering and body engineering, it shows the emergence in this context the concept of science for engineers. It remains a practical science whose main purpose, strength and safety of built structures, encourages the continuation of proven methods.

admit not being sure that the book Alder certainly interesting (and sometimes horrifying, it must be said), deserves to polarize the debate at this point - in any event, here we are with a recent history well kept and engineering in the eighteenth century, both the organization of military engineers of scientific thinking and the mentality of a body art. In addition, work on the controversy Langin fortification perpendicular undertaken for years, deserved to be published in book form. Well, a couple of balls on Metallurgical de Montalembert, but ultimately less than the deplorable bio that was published last year by a local scholar.

Chris Evans and Göran Rydén (eds.), The Industrial Revolution in Iron, The Impact of British Coal Technology in Nineteenth-Century Europe , Ashgate, 2005, 200pp

Collections articles of this type are sometimes passable, other times mediocre (the syndrome of publish or perish ) but sometimes they do more forward thinking than a brick of a single author. This is the case of the latter, edited by two eminent representatives of a new generation of historians of technology - I heard Chris Evans at the conference on steel, CNAM, it was brilliant. He will go far, this little guy. Finally, rather large, actually.

What they're saying, collectively? What if, as we know, the technical changes occurred in Great Britain for the production of iron had a fundamental influence on European industry, this influence has a story - it is not immediate, it is not complete, it goes without saying. There is not a "technical revolution" that overnight returns the old processes to the rank of survivals, but rather the contributions vary according to regions considered in terms of local technical culture. It seems obvious, but it has not been studied that much. What interested the first generation of French historians of technology, those 50-60 years is the emergence of the technical system which then triumphed with the creation of the ECSC and peak production thirty glorious. This book shows how the story is more subtle, and how much space remains to be explored if we are willing to turn from the "idol of origins" (to use one of these forms of Marc Bloch that we do not meditate enough).

short, with these avenues of research, here we are with the job for twenty years. Well, let's go!

Well, not everything, but Feather's research, companies are also in years, they deserve to be written, too!

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Installation

You will find here the entries in this category that was my story said on 20six. I copied the entries as shown, one or two typos closely, there are some entries where I broke down and added little notes in brackets.

To follow, of course.

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Apology for history

Probably the only book on the historian's practice of history that I reread continually piecemeal: Apology for history or art historian Marc Bloch - undoubtedly the founder of historical science as we practice it today. The book is unfinished, the author, resistant, was among the victims of Klaus Barbie, it was published by his friend Lucien Febvre in 1949. It is a wonderful book

- everything is there, almost to the point we could just quote piecemeal. Here, on the question of vocabulary, already mentioned here methinks, and so powerful in the history of technology (what words to use, those of our sources or ours? And how not read the words of our sources as they were ours?), a phrase

For, much to the chagrin of historians, men are not accustomed, whenever they change their habits, change of vocabulary.

I'll stop there; quote Marc Bloch is like eating pistachios, once you start, you can not stop.