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Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2005

“AN EYE FOR AN OPTICAL THEORY”

Résumé

(the complete version for private use is available by simple request to the author by email)

The changing frame of innovation, in economic history, is puzzling. The story has been told many times: during the second half of the 18th c., in Paris as well as in London, guilds ceased, at first sight, to be relevent in terms of technical knowledg or improvement, while patent legislations gave to innovators individual rights to escape competition in the market economy. Christine MacLeod (1986) even stresses that patenting was a strategy to avoid guild searches and regulation. But is it that simple? In fact, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez (1994) describes in her thesis how being publicly an “innovator” was much of a strategy of actors embedded in social and economic insitutions. I use the optical trade in Paris and London as observatories of this embedness.
An symptomatic feature of this social embeddness of innovation is the expertise brought before the courts by plaintiffs and deffendants in cases of patent infringement : necessary, as, by legal definition, specifications have to be understable by men of the same trade, but not to the lay man, expertise gives much weight to men outside the legal sphere. Another possible kind of expertise on optics is that of men educated in science. The third expertise possible is that of “technologists”, well informed about prior ars: if such men are acknowledged during the 18th & 19th c., they cannot claim for a monopoly of expertise, as even the administrative or scientific knowledge of present-day technology was far from complete (Alder, 1998). The paper is about tree stories involving such expertises, their role, effectiveness... and their mingling.

1. “Bravura in the Face of Grief”: the resistible rise of a patentee before the trade (Paris, 1824-1828).

The case allows us a better understanding of the underlying organizations and interests in the optical trade. The gradual mobilization of members of the trade against the patentee, as well as the use of scientists, or the litigation over the nomination of experts, proves the persistence of an organization inside the opticial manufacture after the “corporation” being abolished.

2. “The disposition of the linen”: facts and the Spectacle Makers' Company defeated by law ?(London, 1763-1764)

Parallel to the “lorgnettes-jumelles” case, litigation about the patent of John Dollond for achromatic lenses also concerns the organizaton of an entire trade. But here, the petition by the most prestigious members of the Spectacle Makers' Company, the opinion of such skilled witnesses as Jesse Ramsden, cannot balance Lord Mansfield's jurisprudence. This case is usually understood as “another sign of decay” of the London guild organization, and of the rise of an capitalist, individualistic organization. But if so, how to account for the rule of Peter Dollond and his successors over the Spectacle Makers' Company after the defeat of the Company ? A look on the Dollond rule on the SMC after the Dollond case is necessary to understanding trade expertise, well into the 19th century.

3. “Chasing sheep is best left to shepherds”: the many (roles of) experts in the French search for military optics (Paris, 1795-1811).

The “manufature nationale des lunettes achromatiques” and the many incentives to the optical manufacture during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era (for military purposes) are illustrative of a policy which originates in the last decades of the Ancien Régime. Acting as experts, scientists are regularly commissioned to inspect the manufacture and its production. But experts, in their career, do not act only to evaluate the production: they also compare it to that of private manufacture and eventually recommend to maintain competition between top manufacturers. And the practical expertise is left to men of the trade, as public experts do not aim to create an ever-growing open knowledge but an efficient optical industry.
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Dates et versions

halshs-00005174 , version 1 (02-11-2005)
halshs-00005174 , version 2 (19-10-2006)
halshs-00005174 , version 3 (11-11-2008)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-00005174 , version 1

Citer

Stéphane Buzzi. “AN EYE FOR AN OPTICAL THEORY”: Innovations, economic organization and opticial instruments in the making. 2005. ⟨halshs-00005174v1⟩
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