Technology as the science of the industrial arts: Louis-Sébastien Lenormand (1757-1837) and the popularization of technology
- 1 January 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in History and Technology
- Vol. 18 (3) , 203-231
- https://doi.org/10.1080/0734151022000034125
Abstract
In the 1820s and 1830s the German tradition of the scientific description of trades and manufactories initiated by Johann Beckmann in 1777 was continued in France by a number of scientists and technologists. Louis-Sébastien Lenormand was the outstanding representative of French "special" technology, who tried to enrich technical education with popularized empirical descriptions of the industrial arts with a view to "perfecting" technological operations and tools. In this paper, a biography of Lenormand with an emphasis on his technological experience during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods is followed by a thematic analysis of some of Lenormand's publications, the themes discussed being technical education, "pure" technology, the structure of the Dictionnaire technologique , the history of technology, and the scientific character of technological descriptions.Keywords
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