"Changing Scale to Master Nature: Promoting Small-scale Inventions in Eighteenth-century France and Britain". (Original title: "Producers and Consumers Negotiating Scale: Micro-Inventions in Eighteenth-century France and Britain." On-line title changed by author post production.) (October 2020)
Thébaud-Sorger, Marie (Author)
Technology and Culture
Volume: 61
Issue: 4
Pages: 1076-1107
Edition Details: Special Issue: Manufacturing Modernity: Innovations in Early Modern Europe
Language: English
This article examines the social embedding of technical inventions in Britain and France in the second half of the eighteenth century. Small-scale artefacts to improve everyday life marked a new relationship between techniques, public culture, and forces of nature. The ways that micro-inventions such as domestic devices were disseminated through print media, models, and exhibitions demonstrate how inventive strategies and public expectations affected innovation. Producers and users interacted to shape market inventions. Solutions to the problem of ventilation highlight how the dynamics of scale shaped technical inventions, enabling their promotion as multidimensional objects of social reform. Indeed, conceptualizing technologies as scalable transformed prior perceptions of humans' ability to harness nature (such as making noxious air breathable). Civic improvements and industrial innovation also fostered a new materiality, changing how societies perceived their natural environment as well as their impact on it.
...MoreArticle Adam Lucas (October 2020) Manufacturing Modernity: Innovations in Early Modern Europe—An Introduction. Technology and Culture (pp. 995-1016).
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