Technical Books in Boom : Technical Information in Industrializing France

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  • 復古王政期フランスの技術書出版ブーム
  • フッコ オウセイキ フランス ノ ギジュツショ シュッパン ブーム

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Abstract

In Restoration France 1814-1830, the advancement of industrialization had encouraged the mechanization of manufacturing processes, while weakening the apprenticeship as a legitimate training system for the artisans. In such circumstances, technical books began to emerge as a new channel to technical information. These technical books flourished especially in the latter half of the 1820s. This paper focuses on this "boom" of technical books in Restoration France. By conducting a quantitative analysis of Bibliographie de la France, the publication trend of the technical books will be examined, particularly with respect to format and price. From this analysis, it has be shown that the boojcs which triggered such a boom were the "manuals" -small in format, and moderately priced- of particular professions. These were elementary technical books available to the ordinary artisans. In order for these "manuals" to be actually useful, the contents mainly consisted of "practical knowledge," for each targeted profession. Moreover, in most of these manuals, the use of scientific terms were avoided, and instead, descriptions were given in everyday language. Indeed, some of them went as far as using the traditional measurement system, rather than the metric system. Although the actual number of copies of these "manuals" cannot be determined from existing data, presumably they had achieved certain commercial success. In fact, such manuals continued to be published constantly even after the 1830s, and a few of them became so popular that the revised editions had been published one after another.

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