Chinese Technology as a Resource

In 1793 Alexis-Marie de Rochon, an astronomer by training, was commissioned to set up a manufacturing workshop of horn plates in France. This was meant to make up for the shortage of imported horn plates, a commodity which was necessary for the production of lamps used in the military navy. An unexpected resource allowed him to initiate research on horn plate making: a 40-year-old memoir dedicated to the manufacturing of Chinese lanterns. The paper reconstructs Rochon’s research and explains why the use of a Chinese memoir was far from being coincidental in 18th-century France: it was both the result of a massive accumulation of knowledge on Chinese techniques by the French government and of a lack of literature on a very poorly codified European technical practices

Business · French horn · Lantern · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · Engineering · History