5. NAPOLEON AND SCIENCE

What, finally, of Napoleon’s direct influence on the practise and content of science? Was it positive, negative, or null? Are comparisons to be adduced between his effect and the effects of other despotic regimes, those of Hitler and Stalin, say, and of the Committee of Public Safety in the year II?

The first thing to be noted is that, put thus baldly, the question is unanswerable. Distinctions have to be made. The ruling Jacobin Committee penalized the exact sciences, favored and promoted the natural sciences, and exploited the talents of scientists, who eagerly supplied services and gained credit in so doing. In Napoleon’s time, by contrast, internal scientific devel-opments, to which the overworked word “revolutionary” may properly ap-ply, were under way. The emergence of comparative anatomy from natural history and of experimental physiology from the practice of clinical medi-cine were beginning to converge on the formation of a rigorous discipline of biology, a science not yet named. Mathematical physics, hitherto a virtual contradiction in terms, was in the process of formation.

The institutional seats of developments in the life sciences, comparative anatomy and physiology, were respectively in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and the Faculty of Medicine combined with the Hôtel-Dieu, although the Institute was also instrumental in the latter. Napoleon took no special interest in that work or in the people doing it. His regime did nei-ther more nor less for the Muséum and the medical institutions than the Convention and Directory had done. Attachment of the École de Médecine to the Imperial University changed only the name. It became a faculty again. Unlike the Jacobin, Soviet, and Nazi regimes, Napoleon’s exercised no influence over the life sciences.

Napoleon reserved his enthusiasm for the exact sciences. The framework was two-fold, official and unofficial. On the official side, the Institute for-mally invited and rewarded research along mathematical lines by setting and awarding prizes. Informally its ambience encouraged quantification and rigorization, as it also did in shaping values among life scientists. More imme-diately, an unofficial society was the starting point of important careers. In the French scheme of things, the Society of Arcueil, private albeit with pa-tronage from on high, was a novelty with respect to physical science, even as was the Société d’Encouragement with respect to industry, with the difference that the former was a small, informal group of young scientists under the leadership of Berthollet and Laplace.

Thanks to the admirable study by Maurice Crosland, the history and importance of the Society of Arcueil are well known, and a summary will suffice.¹⁴⁵ Soon after returning from Egypt with Bonaparte in 1799, Berthol-let purchased an ample country house in the suburb of Arcueil, a good hour’s walk south of central Paris. There he installed a chemical laboratory and equipped an adjoining room with instruments of physics. Dissatisfied with the theory of elective affinities as he had taught it at the École Normale, Berthollet now set out to develop a more physical understanding of chemical combination by enlarging on his chance observations of the formation of soda from the double decomposition of salt and limestone alongside the Natron Lakes in Egypt. His two-volume Essai de statique chimique (1803), though lacking clarity in certain passages, was a pioneering work of physical chemistry.

Laplace too was turning attention to physics in those years. Or perhaps turning it again—the Mémoire sur la chaleur (1783), on which he had collaborated with Lavoisier, is a work of chemical physics. Berthollet and Laplace, drawn together by personal affinity, scientific interests, and association with Bonaparte, formed a virtual partnership during the Consulate and Empire. Laplace contributed two notes on the relation of temperature to pressure among the molecules of an enclosed gas to Essai de statique chimique.¹⁴⁶ In 1806 Laplace bought the house adjacent to Berthollet’s and moved his household there from Paris. The two properties communicated through a gate in the garden wall. Such was the seat of the Society of Arcueil, orga-nized informally in 1807, and consisting of disciples and close associates of the two founders. A small and intimate company, the Society consisted of nine members at the outset and another six before activities wound down after 1815.

Berthollet and Laplace served on the Conseil de Perfectionnement of the École Polytechnique throughout the Napoleonic period. From among its students, both guided talented young men by way of membership in the Society into careers in science. Berthollet’s immediate protégés were his son, Amédée X-1796, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac X-1797, and Pierre-Louis Dulong X-1801. Laplace’s were Jean-Baptiste Biot X-1794, Etienne Malus X-1794, Siméon-Denis Poisson X-1798, and Dominique Arago X-1803. In addition Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils, whom Berthollet had recruited for the Egyptian expedition and who was subsequently head of the laboratory at the École des Mines, was a member of the circle, as were Louis-Jacques The-nard, demonstrator at Polytechnique, and Jacques Bérard, the son of Chap-tal’s partner in the chemical plant of La Paille near Montpellier. Free of the Ministry, Chaptal himself joined in the activities of the Society, as did two notable foreign scientists resident in Paris, Alexander von Humboldt and Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle.

In order to appreciate that the Society of Arcueil was the formative stage of the careers of leading figures in the first generation of physical chemistry and mathematical physics, one need only recall from college courses the importance of the Gay-Lussac law of combining volumes in gases and of the Gay-Lussac tower in the lead chamber process for producing sulfuric acid, of Thenard’s discovery of hydrogen peroxide, of the Bérard-Delaroche value for the specific heats of gases (which won the prize set by the Institute in 1811), of the Dulong and Petit law of constant atomic heats, of Malus’s discovery of the polarization of light, of the Biot-Savart law of the intensity and direction of magnetic interaction with the electric current; and of Poisson’s po-tential function in electrodynamics and the physics of work and energy—to name only highlights.

It is further to be recalled that education in the École Polytechnique consisted of the equivalent, relative to the times, of a modern undergraduate major in mathematics accompanied by a course in chemistry. What turned our authors to careers in science was precisely the guidance and patronage of Berthollet and Laplace. Bérard lived in Berthollet’s house and assisted in the laboratory before returning to Montpellier to teach chemistry in the faculties of pharmacy and medicine. On Gay-Lussac’s graduation from Polytechni-que, Berthollet took him also into his house, worked with him in the laboratory, and secured him an appointment as adjunct professor of chemistry at Polytechnique, from where he moved to the Faculty of Science as professor of physics and eventually to the Muséum as professor of chemistry.

Thenard, originally of peasant stock, followed Fourcroy’s and Vauquelin’s public courses with a view to becoming a pharmacist. Vauquelin took him on, first in the menial position of cleaning apparatus in the laboratory, later as assistant and substitute lecturer. In December 1798 he was appointed demonstrator at the École Polytechnique, where he came to Berthollet’s attention. In 1804 Thenard succeeded Vauquelin in the chair of chemistry at the Collège de France. He addressed himself to problems of organic and industrial chemistry throughout his career, was active in the Société d’Encouragement, and served the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers on its governing board. After graduating from Polytechnique, Dulong began his career as assistant in Thernard’s laboratory. Plagued by ill health, he went on to an arduous teaching career and to his productive collaboraton with Petit on the physics of atomic heats.

After graduating from Polytechnique, Biot taught mathematics in the École Centrale of Beauvais. Not content to rusticate, he wrote Laplace offering to read the proofs of the forthcoming Mécanique céleste. Frequent meetings with Laplace to clarify difficult passages deepened his mathematical education. In the course of those readings Laplace secured him the post of entrance examiner at Polytechnique. Appointment to the chair of mathe-matics at the Collège de France followed in 1800, and election to the Institute in 1803, both with Laplace’s support.

In 1806 (it will be recalled) the Bureau des Longitudes commissioned Biot and Arago to extend the survery of the meridian to the Balearic Islands. Laplace, president of the Bureau, had appointed Arago to be its secretary only the previous year, when he graduated from Polytechnique. On his return from captivity in Spain and Algeria, Arago shared lodgings for a time with Humboldt, a charter member of the Society of Arcueil, and partici-pated in its activities prior to becoming a member. The remaining poly-technician, Malus, was an officer on active duty in the Corps of Engineers and not resident in Paris until 1810, when he too joined the Society. He had been with Monge in the Egyptian expedition, and Monge’s courses at Poly-technique had formed his mathematical taste and style in a geometric man-ner. Only at Arcueil was he drawn into Laplace’s orbit.

It is not to be supposed that the investigations occupying members of the Society followed two distinct tracks, one for problems of chemistry set by Berthollet, the other for problems of physics set by Laplace. Berthollet and Laplace shared a Newtonian outlook. Berthollet sought to understand chemical and Laplace physical interactions on the model of forces of attraction and repulsion operating on ultimate particles. The problems that inter-ested them both were at bottom physical, the physics pertaining to chemis-try on the one hand and the physics pertaining to electricity, magnetism, light, sound, and heat on the other.

Berthollet’s disciples never confined themselves to the one, nor Laplace’s to the other. Biot and Gay-Lussac collaborated on the balloon ascent that determined values for the magnetic field and physical properties of various gases at different altitudes. Bérard collaborated with Malus in an investigation of the polarization of infrared and ultraviolet light. Biot collaborated with Humboldt on geographical variations in the magnetic field. Thenard worked with Biot on an analysis of samples of aragonite and calcite collected from certain meteorites. Thenard’s collaboration with Gay-Lussac, both chemists to be sure, resulted in publication of over twenty papers on the properties of newly discovered potassium. Berthollet and Laplace were jointly responsible for commissioning Biot and Arago to investigate the refractive indices of a large number of gases. The very title of their memoir conveys the Newtonianism, both chemical and physical, of the investigation: “Memoire sur les affinites des corps pour la lumière, et particulièrement sur les forces réfringentes des différens gaz.”¹⁴⁷

All these examples and many more may be found in the three volumes of Mémoires de physique et de chimie de laSociété d’Arcueil, published in 1807, 1809, and 1817.148 Berthollet never fully recovered from the suicide of his son in 1812. That, and the confusion attending the fall of Napoleon, account for the subsequent decline of the Society and the delayed appearance of its third volume. After preliminary discussion in the meetings at Arcueil, many of the memoirs were also read before the Institute. Except for those papers awaiting the last volume, publication by the Society was far more rapid than by the Institute.

The three volumes contain some forty-odd entries ranging in scale from monographs to short notes. The majority (in the first volume the over-whelming majority) concern chemistry rather than physics. The disparity is not, however, a measure of the importance of the program of the Society of Arcueil in the history of the two sciences. Physical chemistry settled into its stride there and was a going concern before the Society separated. By con-trast, the reformation of physics was then still in its early stages. At this opening juncture Laplace addressed himself and his followers mainly to quantification of physical phenomena: electrical attraction, capillary action, the speed of sound, and the atmospheric refraction of light. Systematic mathematicization was the second stage. Laplace was certainly responsible for defining the terms of the four famous prize competitions set by the Institute for mathematical theories of double refraction, of the diffusion of heat, of elastic surfaces, and of the diffraction of light.¹⁴⁹ Mathematicization of physics, however, was a movement wider than Laplace and his three faithful retainers, Biot, Malus, and Poisson. Arago rebelled against the mas-ter, while others carried the work into the 1820s, notably Ampère, Fourier, Fresnel, and Cauchy, all connected with the École Polytechnique, not to mention one who was neither a polytechnician nor a Laplacian, Sophie Germain.

As for Napoleon’s part in the Arcueil program, it was clearly nothing internal to the science. He never attended a meeting of the Society. His patronage was nonetheless essential. The sense of an approving friend, though never so distant, in power was good for morale. The fundamental matter, however, was money. Neither Berthollet nor Laplace was originally a man of means. Their incomes were adequate before 1799, but they could not have afforded the properties at Arcueil, let alone the apparatus and the support for assistants. Berthollet was bad at managing his finances. Even with his emoluments from the Senate, he had fallen deeply into debt by 1807. Laplace took it on himself to write Napoleon, then at the head of his army in Prussia, recalling Berthollet’s many services and asking for a loan of 100,000 to 150,000 francs. In one of the few instances of cooperation with Laplace, Monge cosigned the appeal. Napoleon rallied at once, not with a loan, but with an outright grant of 150,000.¹⁵⁰ Berthollet’s preface to the first volume of the Mémoires concludes:

The progress of Physics is of great interest since the goal is to discover the true causes of phenomena, to identify the forces of nature, and to indicate their application to human industry.

May the zeal of the Society of Arcueil in striving to reach these goals merit the approbation of the august head of our Government!

May peace, the wish for which has long been in the heart of the triumphant hero, permit his genius to extend its fruitful influence over the arts and sciences, which alone would have assured his glory, even if the destiny of the world had not been placed in his hands!¹⁵¹

Only once did Bonaparte take a personal initiative in a matter of scien-tific research, and then to limited avail. In September 1801 Alessandro Volta journeyed to Paris to demonstrate and explain the electric battery, which he had invented in an intensive course of experimentation conducted in his native Como in late 1799 and early 1800.152 Volta’s high reputation in electrical science dated from his invention of the electrophore in 1775, an instrument that permitted electrifying an indefinite number of Leyden jars with-out losing its charge. A derivative, the condensator, was a device that permitted detecting the presence of weak electrical charges. In a kind of proto-field model, Volta considered them to be electrical atmospheres. A first visit to Paris, in 1782, went badly. He then told Lavoisier of experiments he had made in sparking a mixture of inflammable air (hydrogen) and ordi-nary air confined over water in a closed vessel, the inside surface of which was fogged in consequence. Experiments with the condensator in company with Lavoisier and Laplace failed to confirm Volta’s theory that vaporization induces weak electric charges in atmospheric space and conversely. It did not help matters that after his departure they in company with Monge sparked a mixture of air and hydrogen over mercury and obtained droplets of water. His relations with the French scientific community were thereafter compli-cated. A gifted experimentalist and instrumentalist with limited mathemati-cal ability, Volta was not an astute theorist. He refused to adopt the oxygen theory of combustion until well into the 1790s and never accepted Cou-lomb’s measurements of electrostatic forces. His sympathies lay rather with the British than the French scientific style and milieu, and his closest per-sonal connections abroad were with Saussure and others in Geneva.

Nor was he among Italian scientists and intellectuals who welcomed Bonaparte’s incursion into Italy. The Austrian authorities in the Duchy of Milan had always treated him well, financed much of his research, accorded him travel grants, and appointed him to a chair of experimental physics in the University of Pavia, where he was a successful professor. Nothing of a populist, Volta had had no choice but to go along with the Cisalpine Republic. By chance his invention of the battery occurred during the interval between April 1799 and June 1800, during which the Austrians in alliance with the British briefly regained control of Lombardy. In the persuasive view of Giuliano Pancaldi, his current (and best) biographer, all this background explains how it was that Volta elected to announce his invention in letters, written, however, in French, to the president of the Royal Society in London, Sir Joseph Banks.

He sent the first, a four-page description of the pile with no drawing, by mail from Como on 20 March 1800. A full account followed by messenger ten days later. It contained diagrams both of the pile and the crown of cups apparatus. The former consisted of a stack of paired silver coins and zinc disks with a moistened cardboard pad between each pair. The latter con-sisted of a ring of glass cups filled with water, or better a slightly salty or alkaline solution, and joined by bimetallic strips of silver and zinc spliced together in the middle with the silver end dipping into one cup and the zinc into the next.

Both arrangements were easy to replicate. William Nicholson set to work at once and was immediately struck by the chemical effects produced by the battery, beginning with the decomposition of water. Thomas Garnett presented that experiment before the public in a lecture at the Royal Institution on 28 May 1800. The news spread fast, from London to Bristol and Glasgow, to Haarlem and Copenhagen, and to Geneva and Halle, all by mid-summer. Pancaldi estimates that by the end of the summer several dozen batteries had been constructed.¹⁵³ The French were among the last to learn the news. On 17 August the Moniteur universel published a translated account of elaborate experiments by Nicholson that had appeared in the London Morning Chronicle. The first to experiment with the battery in Paris was one Etienne-Gaspard Robertson, a popular science and pseudo-science showman who gave public demonstrations of apparitions, electrical phe-nomena, and other marvels in a nightly show called “Fantasmagorie de Rob-ertson.” In common with many serious scientists, among them Nicholson, he took the electric current to be a more powerful form of galvanism, or animal electricity, and wrote of its effects on the human body in a paper read before the Institute on 2 September 1800 and published in the Annales de chimie.¹⁵⁴ Experimentation followed on physiology and voltaic electricity in Halld6e769057-658’s laboratory in the École de Médecine (in which Laplace took an interest) and on electrochemistry in the laboratories of Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Guyton, and Berthollet, who differed from one another on its implications for theories of chemical combination.¹⁵⁵

The reception accorded the battery both pleased and troubled Volta, pleased him in that the device quickly won far greater notice among a gen-eral as well as a learned public than he had expected, troubled him in that the celebration and many interpretations of its effects tended to divert attention, not to say obscure, what concerned him most, which was the battery itself, its invention, its identity, and its working. He had never had any respect for Galvani, a mere physician in his eyes, and he dismissed the notion of animal electricity as chimerical. In his view the frog’s leg was merely a crude electrometer twitching in response to the electricity gener-ated by the contact of the two metals in the galvanic circuit. What with the normal lag between scientific discovery and its comprehension by laymen, water was still widely considered to be an element. Its deconstruction into two gases, before the eyes of all to see, struck public opinion more forcibly than did the simple fact of a strong electric current. Scientists, particularly in Britain, went on from that to electrolysis of alkali salts, by means of which Humphry Davy isolated elementary sodium and potassium in 1807. Chemical action, he predicted at the outset, must be responsible in some manner for production of the electric current in the first place, perhaps by oxidation of the zinc. Volta foresaw no such consequences, let alone a pros-pect for electrodynamics.

Nor did any of that much interest him. Volta’s concern in 1800 was to protect his intellectual property in the very existence of the battery, in its production of the electric current, and in his theory of how it worked. For that, the forum had to be Paris, the center of European science, not Lon-don, where developments were already out of hand. By the time Volta reached that decision, in the autumn of 1800, the French were again in control of Lombardy and had reestablished the Cisalpine Republic. Peace was concluded with Austria at Lunéville in February 1801, and the times seemed more auspicious for a visit to Paris. Volta opened a correspondence with Monge and Berthollet, sent Chaptal a description of the battery, sounded out the French commander in Italy, and applied to the authorities in Milan for a grant to cover the cost of a trip to Paris. It was approved—for the purpose of “cementing an alliance of talents and knowledge between the Cisalpine and the French republics”—and Volta departed for Paris on 1 September 1801.¹⁵⁶

His object was twofold. He wished in the first place to interest Bonaparte in his invention in order to solidify his position materially in the Cisalpine Republic and to burnish his reputation in the eyes of all Europe with the sheen of the First Consul’s patronage. More specifically, he wished to per-suade the scientific establishment of the cogency of his theory of the battery and to dispel the doubts about his electrical work that had lingered since his first visit to Paris nineteen years previously. Volta was well received. In short order he met with Chaptal, Berthollet, Monge, Fourcroy, and Cuvier. He was invited to attend gatherings at Berthollet’s house in Arcueil. In early November the representative of the Cisalpine Republic presented him to Bonaparte. Bonaparte for his part made it clear to the scientific community that he wished Volta’s visit to be a success. That it should be so would answer to his affinity for things Italian (as indeed did galvanism) and con-firm his commitment to the Cisalpine Republic. He arranged that Volta should attend a congress of Italian representatives meeting in Lyons in December, which duly elected the First Consul to be President of the Cisalpine.

Beyond politics, Bonaparte also had an intuitive sense that electricity would somehow ride high on the wave of the scientific future. As member of the Institute no less than First Consul, he attended the three demonstrations Volta presented before that body. At the last he undertook to fund a gold medal and a prize of 3,000 francs to be awarded annually for the best experiment made each year on the “galvanic fluid,” and beyond that a one-time prize in the unheard of amount of 60,000 francs to be awarded to anyone who should make experimental discoveries in electricity and galva-nism comparable to Franklin’s and Volta’s. In the short run and with respect to public acclaim, Volta’s two-month stay in Paris was an unqualified success in the eyes of both Bonaparte and Volta.

It was less so with respect to professional opinion in the Institute. There is no doubt but that Bonaparte’s interest led the scientific establishment to pay more attention to Volta’s claims than it might otherwise have done. The Institute appointed the equivalent of a blue-ribbon commission to report on the question. It consisted of Laplace, Coulomb, Hallé, Monge, Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Pelletan, Charles, Brisson, Sabatier, Guyton, and, as reporter, Laplace’s protégé Biot. They adopted Bonaparte’s proposal that the first gold medal go to Volta himself. Patronage from on high could not impose un-qualified endorsement, however. For the theory by means of which Volta thought to establish the identity and explain the working of the battery was problematic at best. In his view, what generated the electric current was the tension created by direct, dry contact of the two metals. The presence of fluids served only to transmit the effect from one pair to the next, thus augmenting it by addition. Whatever chemical reactions occurred in the electrolytic solutions that completed the circuit were secondary and deriva-tive phenomena of little interest.

Unfortunately for the theory, the chemical effects, as well as the jolt ad-ministered by the pile or the crown of cups, all of which were easy to demonstrate dramatically, were what fascinated not only the general public but also fellow scientists. The experiment Volta undertook before his col-leagues of the Institute, in his view “the fundamental experiment,” was diffi-cult to perform and difficult to repeat. He sought to show that contact of the two metals in a single pair, an element so to say of the battery, produced an electromotive force. At best the effect was very slight. Nor was his method of detecting it free from objections. In order to multiply its strength to a measurable level, he used his condensator, a device that in the eyes of critics may have begged the question by producing the very charge it was supposed to measure. Also it registered a tension only on the silver side of the bimetallic pair. The reading on the zinc side was null unless a bit of wet cardboard was inserted between the metal and the condensator. Estimating the condensing power of the instrument and its relation to the tension, or potential, created by contact of the paired metals required elaborate arithme-tical calculations that could appear to be gratuitous. Finally Volta’s French colleagues were happier with Coulomb’s torsion balance as an electrometer in place of the condensator. They used it in their own experimental verifications, but Volta would have none of that.¹⁵⁷

Biot’s report to the Institute is a curious document. Ostensibly, it was favorable, in large part (it may be thought) because it was to be read in Bonaparte’s presence, two days before Volta’s departure for Lyons on 4 December 1801.¹⁵⁸ Biot did conclude, with Volta, that the galvanic current was a weak special case of the electrical, and that the functioning of the battery was to be analyzed in terms of its physics and not of its chemical effects. Apart from that, the argument bears little resemblance to the one Volta had advanced. It treats his invention of the battery and its production of a strong, steady electric current as the culmination of a tradition of experimental electrical research passing from Dufay through Franklin, Aepinus, and Coulomb’s work in electrostatics in the 1770s and 1780s.¹⁵⁹ Since the latter had found the attractive or repulsive force between, respectively, bodies of opposite or like charge to vary as the inverse square of the distance between them, his law appealed to the Newtonianism of Laplace, Berthollet, and their circle. It may well be considered the point of departure of a mod-ern mathematical physics. Through the intermediary, not to say the midwif-ery, of Laplace, Biot fathered on Volta the occasion for the opening exercise in the research program that would express the quantified laws of a newly rigorous experimental physics in the formalism of analytical mechanics.¹⁶⁰ From Mécanique céleste Biot adopted formulas for the theoretical shape of the earth as an ellipsoid of revolution and applied them to the distribution of electric charge on such a surface. From that he went on to calculate the gradient of tension inside the battery as a function of the repulsive force acting on the hypothetical molecules of the electric fluid. Biot had engaged in experimental study of the battery when news of it first reached Paris, but the discussion in his report to the Institute is strictly mathematical. It is not clear that Volta ever read it, or that he would have understood it if he had. He never mentioned it in later writings or correspondence.¹⁶¹

Unlike later memoirs, such as Poisson’s analysis of electrostatics and Fresnel’s of the diffraction of light, Biot’s opening gun in what became the campaign to mathematicize experimental physics had little influence on the science. It may even have had adverse side effects. Presented as a report to the Institute, it institutionalized the emphasis on the physics of the battery to the exclusion of its chemical action. That can only have weakened inter-est among the younger generation in the promising start on electrochemistry begun by their elders, Guyton, Fourcroy, and Vauquelin. In the next ten years electrochemistry was left largely to the British and the Germans. More largely, further stages in developing an understanding of the battery and the electric current proved to be experimental, not mathematical, and the French contributed little or nothing to the field until the 1820s, when Ampère turned his hand to the analysis of the phenomenon of electromagne-tism, discovered by Oersted in 1820.

The annual Napoleonic medal for experimental discoveries in electricity was awarded only three times in all, one of them to Davy, and the great prize of 60,000 francs never. It may perhaps be thought ironic that French work in electrical science might have been more fruitful had the experimen-tal direction Bonaparte proposed been followed instead of the analytic path laid out by the dominant professional members of the Institute. As to the present point, which is the extent of Napoleon’s influence upon French science, the episode may illustrate the general proposition that, as distinct from the internal patronage of a Laplace and a Berthollet, the effect of external patronage on the practice and content of science has its limits.

More broadly, the character and vitality of the science that emerged from revolutionary change in France was not imprinted upon it by Napoleon’s favor or enthusiasm. His own career may rather be seen as the political and military instance of an élan animating French polity in general, a confident urge to conquest manifested in its technical reaches by the scientific enterprise. It was not Napoleon who conferred pride of place on science in French culture. The authors of the constitution of the Directory did that in their blueprint for the organization of the Institute. It was not Napoleon who institutionalized modern science in France. It was the Convention and the Directory. The research programs that launched the modern disciplines of physical chemistry, mathematical physics, experimental physiology, and comparative anatomy—nothing of all that began under Napoleon’s aegis. His favor and patronage undoubtedly fortified morale and underwrote the execution of much that was already under way, particularly in the exact sciences.

But none of it started, nor did any of it end, with him.

1 On the political aspects of the French in Italy from 1796 to 1799, see Palmer (1959–64), 2, pp. 263–326.

2 Above, chapter 6, section 6.

3 On Monge in Italy, see Launay (1933), pp. 196–226, and Aubry (1954). A transcription by Monge’s son-in-law, Eugène Eschassériaux, of his correspondence with his wife and family is in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France. The largest portion concerns his two missions in Italy. A microfilm and printout may be consulted in the library of Princeton University. Still more useful is an Italian translation, edited and thoroughly annotated by Cardinale and Pepe (1993). The “avant-propos” of the August 2002 issue, no. 31, of Sabix announces that the de Chaubry family, descended from Monge, are placing his papers in the Bibliothèque de l’École Polytechnique.

4 Pepe (1997).

5 On the involuntary Italian contributions to the library and laboratories of the École Poly-technique, see Pepe (1996b).

6 Dupin (1819), pp. 96–99.

7 Quoted in Launay (1933), p. 61.

8 Cardinale and Pepe (1993), pp. 29–30.

9 Dupin (1819) gives an evocative account.

10 Bonaparte to the Directoire Exécutif, 18 October 1797, Correspondance de Napoléon 1^er 2 (1859), p.390.

11 On the Roman Republic, see Palmer (1959–64), 2, pp. 365–382; and on the Daunou commission, Godechot (1937), 2, pp. 17–41.

12 Monge to Bonaparte, 15 March 1798, quoted in Pepe (1996a), pp. 56–57.

13 On Monge and the Istituto in Rome, see Pepe (1996a).

14 The classic account for the general history of the expedition is the nearly contemporary Reybaud (1830–36), and for military history La Jonquière (1899–1907). Laurens et al. (1989) treats the expedition from the perspectives both of contemporary Egyptians and of the French. Bret (1998) gives an overview of the state of Egypt during the occupation.

15 Above, chapter 8, section 1.

16 Such was the theme of the frontispiece to the Description de l’Égypte.

17 La Jonquiére (1899–1907) gives the entire text, 1, pp. 154–168.

18 Above, chapter 7, section 4.

19 Laurens (1987).

20 From a memoir written in prison in Messina July 1799, in A. Lacroix (1921), 1, p. 3.

21 Jollois, Journal d’un ingenieur attaché à l’expédition d’Égypte, ed. P. Lefèvre-Pontalis (1904). The second part of this edition contains extracts from the journals kept by Fourier, Alire Raffenau-Delile, Balzac, Descotils, Jomard, Saint-Genis, and Coraboeuf.

22 Laissus (1998) is a colorful account of the adventures and misadventures of members of the Commission.

23 Goby (1951–52).

24 Gillispie and Dewachter (1987 and later printings) is an edition of the plates on antiquity. The introduction and critical apparatus contain full information on the bibliography, con-tents, preparation, and publication of the work, and on its importance for Egyptology.

25 Denon, Voyage dans la basse et la haute Égypte (1802).

26 E. de Villiers du Terrage, Journal et souvenirs sur l’éxpédition d’Égypte (1899), p. 131.

27 Volume 4, plate 21.

28 Ibid., p. 156.

29 For its procedures, see Gillispie (1980), pp. 492–493.

30 Below, n. 77.

31 See the notes he kept of his travels in Egypt, published in Jollois, Journal, cited in n. 21 above.

32 Publication occurred through various channels. The Courier de l’Égypte, a chronicle or calendar of public events comparable to the semi-official Moniteur universel in Paris, occasionally printed abstracts of the proceedings of the Institute. La Décade égyptienne modeled itself on the Décade philosophique, the journal of enlightened learning in France. The majority of the communications to the Institute printed therein were also published in the four vol-umes of the Mémoires sur l’Égypte brought out in Paris by P. Didot between 1799 and 1802. The latter contains much that the Décade, which ceased publication in 1800, does not. Certain memoirs also appeared in the regular scientific press—the Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Bulletin de la Société Philomathique, Journal des Mines, and so on. Several members of the expedition published books on what they had seen and learned, for example Des-genettes’s Histoire médicale de l’Armée d’Orient (1802). Many of the memoirs in the Description de l’Égypte were first presented to the Institut d’Égypte.

33 On 29 July 1799 Monge read a draft of a memoir of infinitesimal geometry later pub-lished in Journal de l’École Polytechnique (11^e cahier, 1802). It was the first of three papers eventually included in Application de l’analyse à la géométrie (1807). Fourier read four papers on pure mathematics, (Goby [1987], pp. 203, 221, 263, 274, 533). The first, “Notes sur la mécanique générale,” was probably an outgrowth of his earliest published paper, a memoir on virtual velocities in the Journal de l’Ecole Polytechnique (5^e cahier, 1798), which was the only thing he ever published on classical mechanics. The titles of the other three papers concern theory of equations. It is often said that his interest in heat diffusion originated during his three years in the Egyptian climate, but there is nothing in the written record to substantiate that surmise. Of the other mathematicians, Corancez, an altogether minor follower of Lagrange, presented a on the theory of algebraic equations and another on the design of balance wheels in watches to minimize the effects of heat dilation (Goby [1987] 232, 483). Malus, a Monge disciple, presented a memoir on differential equations. A memoir on light, Malus’s entry into what became his principal work in physics, was intended for the Institute but never read. Arago gives a resumé (“Malus,” Oeuvres 3 [1859], pp. 131–134). Berthollet, finally, read a paper on the formation of ammonia and another on the eudiometric analysis of the atmosphere. Goby (1987) gives a detailed account of the entire Procès-Verbaux of the Institute.

34 Goby (1987) lists the questions that Bonaparte proposed to the Institut d’Égypte concerning such matters as resources for the manufacture of gunpowder, improvement of ovens for baking bread, the water supply, substitutes for hops in brewing beer, and so on.

35 “Mémoire sur le phénomène d’optique connu sous le nom de mirage,” Décade égyptienne 1 (an 7, 1799), pp. 37–46; reprinted in Mémoires sur l’Égypte 1 (1800), pp. 64–78.

36 “Observations sur le natron,” Mémoires sur l’Égypte 1, pp. 271–279. Extracts were pub-lished in Annales de chimie 33 (1800), pp. 343–348.

37 “Mémoire sur la vallée des lacs du natron,” Décade egyptienne 2, pp. 93–122.

38 PVIF 2, pp. 18, 20, 21, 39; MIF 3 (1801), pp. 1–96.

39 It was for scientific, not antiquarian, reasons that in 1926 Paul Pallary reproduced Sav-igny’s plates on molluscs, identifying the species that Audouin had been unable to name and correcting his faulty annotations—“Explication des planches de J. C. Savigny,” Mémoires présent es à l’Institut d’Égypte 11 (1926), Cairo.

40 “Observations sur l’aile de l’autruche,” Décade égyptienne 1, 46–51; Geoffroy to Cuvier, 21 October 1798, letter xxiii in Hamy (1901), pp. 95–96. Geoffroy also contributed a “Note relative aux appendices des Raies et des Squales,” male sexual organs the function of which was suggested to him by analogy to similar structures that he found dissecting reptiles in upper Egypt, Décade 3, pp. 230–233. In addition, he requested support for a program of experiments to determine whether the sexes coexist in “les germes de tous les animaux.” That topic became a favorite motif of his research in later life, but there is no evidence that he pursued it further in Egypt. Report in Mémoires sur l’Égypte 3, p. 385.

41 Letter cited in n. 40.

42 For recovery of the cargo in 1985, see Bret (1987).

43 “Rapport des Professeurs du Muséum sur les collections d’Histoire naturelle rapportées de l’Égypte par E. Geoffroy,” Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle 1 (an 11, 1802), pp. 234–241.

44 Histoire naturelle et mythologique de l’Ibis (1805), Savigny’s collection, together with five albums containing the original drawings for the plates, was left to his companion, Olympe Letellier de Sainteville, and by her to the city of Versailles, where they lived and died. It might still have been seen in the Bibliothèque de Versailles until 1919. In that year an impatient librarian, pressed for space and failing to arrange for custody in the Museum or elsewhere, consigned the specimens to the cellars. There they moldered until Paul Pallary identified the remains in 1927. See Pallary, “Marie Jules-César Lelorgne de Savigny, sa Vie et son Oeuvre,” Premiere Partie, Mémoires présentes à l’lnstitut d’Égypte 17 (1931).

45 Hamy (1901), letters lviii, lxii.

46 “Histoire naturelle et description anatomique d’un nouveau genre de Poisson du Nil nommé Polyptère,” Annales du Muséum 1 (1802), pp. 57–68; “Description de l’Achire barbu,” Annales du Museum 1, 152–155; “Mémoire sur l’anatomie comparée des organes électriques de la Raie torpille, du Gymnote engourdissant, et du Silure trembleur,” Annales du Muséum 1, pp.

392–407. Geoffroy was very prolific. A complete bibliography is in Cahn (1962).

47 Annales du Muséum, 9 (1807), pp. 469–476.

48 “Premièr mémoire sur les poissons,” ibid., 357–372; “Second mémoire,” ibid., pp. 413– 427; “Troisième mémoire,” ibid., 10, pp. 87–104.

49 “Premier mémoire,” pp. 357–358.

50 Appel (1987).

51 “Système des Oiseaux de l’Égypte et de la Syrie,” DE, HN 1, 1^ere partie (1809), pp. 63–114. A note advises the reader that “this systematization of birds is to form part of a larger work.” It never did. It is one of only two scientific memoirs published uniquely in DE rather than reprinted there after having been long available in the journal literature. The other is Savigny’s Système des Annélides (n. 56 below).

52 Savigny, Mémoires sur les animaux sans vertèbres (1816), pp. iii–iv. For bibliographical de-tail, see Daudin (1926), 2, pp. 314–315.

53 Savigny, “Observations sur la bouche des papillons, des phalènes et des autres insectes lepidoptères; suivies de quelques considérations sur la bouche des diptères, des hémidiptères, et des aptères suçants,” Mémoires sur les animaux, 1, pp. 1–37, lues à l’Institut le 16 octobre 1814. “Rapport de Lamarck,” PVIF (24 October 1814) 5, pp. 408–411.

54 Savigny “Observations sur la bouche des Arachnides, des Crustacés et des Entomostracés,” Mémoires sur les animaux, 1, pp. 39–117, lues à l’Institut le 19 juin 1815. “Rapport de Lamarck, Cuvier, Latreille,” PVIF (3 July 1815) 5, pp. 521–526.

55 Savigny, “Observations sur les Alcyons gélatineux à six tentacules simples,” Mémoires sur les animaux, 2, 1–23; lues à l’Institut le 6 février 1815, “Observations sur les Alcyons à deux oscules apparens, sur les Botrylles et sur les Pyrosomes,” lues le 1^er mai 1815, 2, pp. 25–66. Rapport de Cuvier, PVIF (8 May 1815) 5, pp. 496–500. The third memoir in this series was “Observations sur les ascidies proprement dites, suivies de considérations générales sur la Classe des Ascidies,” 2, pp. 83–132.

56 DE, HN, Texte, 1, 2^e Partie, Tableau systématique des Ascidies, tant simples que composées, mentionnées dans les trois mémoires suivants; offrant les Caractères des Ordres, Familles, Genres et l’lndication sommaire des Espèces, 1, pp. 58; and 3^e Partie, Système des Annélides, principalement de celles des Côtes de l’Égypte et de la Syrie, offrant les Caractòres tant distinctifs que naturels des Ordres, Familles, et Genres, avec la Description des Espòces, pp. 1–128. Savigny appended a note stating that after communicating the monograph to the Academy, he had added four new genera, and had added five new species to five others, but had made no other changes.

57 “Rapport sur le travail de M. Savigny relatif aux annélides,” PVIF (6 March 1820) 7, pp. 22–28.

58 “Remarques sur les Phosphènes, phénomènes dont le principe est dans l’organe de la vue, ou fragments du journal d’un observateur atteint d’une maladie des yeux,” Mémoires de l’Acaémie des Sciences 18 (1842), pp. 385–416. In the opinion of colleagues in the Wilmer Ophthal-mological Institute, Savigny’s illness was other than ocular. They find the symptoms to be a “classic description of temporal lobe epilepsy.” The cause in an adult is normally a tumor, though it is rare for an adult so afflicted to survive the onset as long as did Savigny. Letter to the author from Dr. Alfred Sommer, 19 September 1988.

59 But see P. Ascherson and G. Schweinfurth, “Illustrations de la Flore d’Égypte,” Mémoires présentés à l’Institut Égyptien 2 (1889), pp. 25–260, avant-propos.

60 Geoffroy to A.-L. de Jussieu, 12 August 1796, in Hamy (1901), lettre xv, p. 67.

61 “Réflexions sur quelques points de comparaison à établir entre les plantes d’Égypte et celles de France,” DE, HN, texte 1, 1^ére partie, 59–62.

62 “Flore d’Égypte,” DE, HN, texte 2, pp. 145–320; “Florae aegyptico illustratio,” DE, HN, texte 2, pp. 49–82; “Mémoire sur les plantes qui croissent spontanément en Égypte,” DE, HN, texte 2, pp. 1–10; “Histoire des plantes cultivés en Égypte,” DE, HN, texte 2, pp. 11–24, “Description du palmier doum,” DE, HN, texte 1, 1 ^érepartie, pp. 53–58.

63 Rozière, “Discours sur la représentation des roches de l’Égypte et de l’Arabie par la gravure, et son utilité dans les arts et dans la géologie,” DE, HN, texte 2, pp. 41–48.

64 “Explication des planches de minéralogie,” ibid., pp. 683–725.

65 Ibid., pp. 407–682.

66 Ibid., p. 408.

67 Ibid., 3^e partie, sec 1^ére, pp. 497–534. For other discussions, see P. S. Girard, “Mémoire sur le Nilomètre de l’Ile d’ Éléphantine, et les mésures égyptiennes,” DE, Antiquités, Mémoires, 1, pp. 1–48; Edme Jomard, “Mémoire sur le système métrique des anciens Égyptiens,” DE, Antiquitiés, Mémoires, 1, pp. 495–802; Samuel Bernard, “Notice sur les Poids Arabes anciens et modernes,” DE, EM 2, 1^ére partie, pp. 229–248, and “Mémoire sur les Monnoies de l’Égypte,” DE, EM, 1^ére partie, pp. 321–468.

68 On 18 February 1802, Chaptal, then Minister of the Interior, summoned the members of the Institute of Egypt to his office in order to name the commission that would oversee the work. They chose Monge, Berthollet, Fourier, Costaz, Desgenettes, and Conté. See Pierre Jacotin, “Mémoire sur la construction de la carte de l’Égypte,” DE, EM 2, 2^e partie, pp. 1–118, 18–19.

69 D’Hunebourg, Minister of War, to Berthollet, in 1808, though undated, Bibliothèque nationale, NAFr 3577, registre 2, containing the procès-verbaux of the Commission on the DE.

70 A manuscript memoir by Jacotin gives a different and fuller listing than the page of credits printed with the atlas. “Exposé des moyens employés pour parvenir à la confection de la Carte de l’Égypte.” Bibliothèque nationale, Département de cartographie, GeDD2564. It is evidently an early draft of certain of the passages included in the memoir cited in note 68.

71 J.-M. Le Père, “Mémoire sur la Communication de la Mer des Indes à la Mer Méditerran ée, par la Mer Rouge et l’Isthme de Soueys,” DE, EM 1 , 21–186. On this enterprise, see J. E. Goby, “Histoire des nivellements de l’Isthme de Suez,” Bulletin de la Société d Etudes Historiques et Géographiques de l’Isthme de Suez 4 (1951–52), pp. 99–177.

72 Jacotin’s explanation of the two techniques, op. cit., n. 68 above, 12–13, is admirably clear and could well be incorporated in a modern manual of surveying. The terrain sectors allocated to each engineer were chosen to include at least two of Nouet’s reference sites, one at either end where each overlapped with the neighboring sector. They could thus serve to control the accuracy of the traverse in each sector and to link it to the next.

73 Jacotin, ibid., pp. 29–30; Nouet, “Observations astronomiques faites en Égypte pendant les Années 6, 7, et 8 (1798, 1799, 1800),” DE, EM 1, pp. 1–20.

74 “Lettre . . . sur un plan propre à rédiger la Topographie physique et médicale de l’Égypte,” 25 thermidor an VI (12 August 1798), Décade égyptienne 1, pp. 29–33. Cf. Goby (1987), p. 99.

75 Above, chapter 7, section 6.

76 Larrey, “Mémoire et observations sur plusieurs maladies qui ont affecté les troupes de l’Armée française pendant l’Expédition d’Égypte et de Syrie,” DE, EM 1, pp. 427–524.

77 The titles being very long, perhaps it will suffice to cite the locations: Larrey, DE, EM 2, 1 ^érepartie, pp. 1–6; Dubois-Aymé, DE, EM, 1, pp. 193–202; 577–606; Jomard, DE, Antiquités, Mémoires 2, pp. 87–142, Lancret, DE, EM 1, pp. 233–260, Girard, DE, EM 2, 1 ^ére Partie, 491–711.

78 Estève, DE, EM 1, pp. 299–398; Vilioteau, DE, Antiquités, Mémoires 1, pp. 181–206, 357–426; DE, EM 1, pp. 607–846, 1012–1016.

79 The most interesting treatment of this aspect of the subject is an unpublished thèse du 3^iémé cycle by Stéphane Callens, “Étude sur la Description d’Égypte, histoire d’une enquète, 1798– 1830” (September 1985). I am grateful to the author for providing me with a copy of his admirable study.

80 Although Fierro (1983), in a thesis on the history of the Society, is somewhat skeptical of its pretensions, its Bulletin does show a discipline in the course of being formed.

81 DE, EM, pp 363–524; DE, EM 2, 1^ére partie, pp. 185–194.

82 G.-J.-G. Chabrol de Volvic, Statistique des provinces de Savone, d’Oneille, d’Acqui, et de partie de la province de Mondovi, formant l’ancien département de Montenotte (2 vols., 1824). The history of pre-mathematical statistics has recently been drawing attention, for example, Perrot (1977); Viré et al. (1980); Bourguet (1988).

83 Recherches statistiques sur la Ville de Paris et le département de la Seine (4 vols., 1821, 1823, 1826, 1829). Fourier served in the largely honorific post of Directeur du Bureau de la Statisti-que, which assembled the data. On this project, see the interesting compte-rendu of the first volume by Edme Jomard, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 1 ^ére série, 2 (1824), pp. 305–322, and also in Revue encyclopédique 21, 2^e série, T. 1^er ( janvier 1824).

84 For the history of the meaning, see Kennedy (1978), an excellent biography of Destutt de Tracy.

85 Éléments d’idéologie (5 vols., 1801–15) 1, p. 1. On Destutt de Tracy, see Kennedy (1978) and Goetz (1993).

86 Staum (1996), pp. 232–235.

87 Des signes, et de l’art de penser considerés dans leurs rapports mutuels, 4 vols., 1799–1800.

88 Picavet (1891), Moravia (1968, 1974), Gusdorf (1978).

89 On Cabanis, see Staum (1980) and Canguilhem, DSB 3 (171), pp. 1–3. Ackerknecht (1967) attributes more importance to his influence than may be altogether warranted.

90 Journal de la maladie et de la mort de Mirabeau (1791).

91 Lehec and Cazeneuve (1956).

92 Ibid., 1, p. 36.

93 Quelques principes et quelques vues sur les secours publics (1803).

94 Rapport fait au nom de la Commission d’Instruction Publique et Projet de résolution sur un mode provisioire de police médicale (4 messidor an VI) (22 June 1798). Lehec and Cazeneuve 2, pp. 388–402.

95 Above, chapter 7, section 6.

96 Quoted in Bredin (1988), p. 9.

97 In Lehec and Cazeneuve (1956) 2, pp. 457–458.

98 “Quelques considérations sur l’organisation sociale en général, et particulièrement sur la nouvelle constitution,” in ibid., pp. 460–491.

99 L.-A. Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Mémoires . . . sur Napoléon (10 vols,. 1829) 4, p. 359.

100 For the statute and membership list, see Aucoc (1889), pp. 77–89.

101 Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Sur une vue scientifique de l’adolescence de Napoléon Bonaparte, formulée dans mon âge mûr sous le nom de Monde de Détails. BN, 8 Oct. Lb⁴⁴ .331.

102 Chaptal (1893), pp. 330–331. On the organization and history of the Conseil d’État, see Aucoc (1876) and, more fully, Le Conseil d’État, son histoire à travers les documents de l’epoque (1974), Series Histoire de l’Administration Française, Éditions du Centre National de la Re-cherche Scientifique.

103 For full detail, see Crosland (1967a), pp. 56–87; Fischer (1988), pp. 234–257.

104 Géométrie de position (1803), Principes fondamentaux de l’équilibre et du mouvement (1803), Mémoire sur la rélation qui existe entre les distances respectives de cinq points quelconques pris dan l’espace, suivi d’une essai sur les transversales (1806). See Gillispie (1971).

105 J. G. Smith (1979), pp. 20–24.

106 AN, AFIV.1316, untitled and dated nivôse an IX (late December 1800 or early January 1801). This was the first draft of a printed report, in which the language is moderated. Analyse des procès-verbaux des conseils généraux des départements, sessions de l’an IX. BN, Lf¹³⁶. 89.

107 AN, AFIV.1316, fol. 20.

108 Ibid., fol. 24.

109 Rapport et Projet de Loi sur l’Instruction Publique, an IX (1800). Dhombres discusses the report in Péronmet (1988), pp. 138–152.

110 Ibid., p. 67.

111 Ibid., p. 43.

112 Palmer (1985), p. 301.

113 For the establishment of the lycées and the Imperial University, see Palmer (1985), pp. 281–328; and for Fourcroy’s role, Smeaton (1962), pp. 80–89.

114 Perrot (1977) gives an overview followed by a detailed bibliography of the enormous literature of regional reports, published and unpublished, from 1795 to 1804.

115 Philippe Dermigny, “Les Chambres de Commerce,” in Péronnet (1988), pp. 196–201.

116 L’Art de faire, gouverner, et perfectionner le vin (an X, 1801).

117 Michel Flanzy, “Science appliquee: le vin,” in Peronnet (1988), pp. 230–238.

118 See the admirable summary by Monique Poulot-Moreau in Péronnet (1988), pp. 219– 229.

119 “Memoire sur le suc de betterave,” lu à l’Institut Royal des Sciences, le 23 octobre 1815, MIF 1, pp. 27–45; De l’industrie francaise (2 vols., 1819) 1, pp. 156–161.

120 Yvette Maurin, Geneviève Gavignaud and Jules Maurin, Jean Georgelin, in Péronnet (1988). Georgelin in particular gives a detailed review of the literature.

121 Compare it, for example, to the summaries in Bergeron (1981).

122 Voyages dans la Grande-Bretagne, entrepris relativement aux services publics de la guerre, de la marine, et des ponts et chaussées, en 1816, 1817, 1818, 1819, et 1820 (6 vols., 1820–24).

123 For Le Creusot, see Gillispie (1980), pp. 435–438, and for the iron industry during the Revolutionary period, Woronoff (1984).

124 J. G. Smith (1979).

125 Gillispie (1957).

126 Grattan-Guinness (1990), pp. 1060–1070; Gillispie (1971).

127 De l’industrie française 2, pp. 40–41.

128 “Histoire de la fondation de la Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale . . .dépuis l’epoque de sa fondation, le 9 brumaire an IX (1^er novembre 1801) an X, jusqu’au 1^er vendémiaire an XI (22 septembre 1802).” Why the founding is dated 9 brumaire is unclear, since the organizational meeting occurred on 27 brumaire (18 November). This compilation contains an account of the founding and the Procès-Verbaux of the meetings for the first year of the Society’s existence, prior to publication of its Bulletin. It is bound with the Bulletin 49 (1850). See also Raymond Cheradame in Péronnet (1988), pp. 191–195.

129 Butrica (1998). Surviving papers of the Society are uncatalogued and in considerable disorder. In 1987 Andrew Butrica was able to gain access to the basement in which they were then stored, and to make a preliminary inventory (Butrica [1988]). On the parlous state of its rich collection of printed materials for the history of technology, see Butrica (1997).

130 “Procès-Verbaux des séances de la Société d’Encouragement,” cited in n.128 above, p. 67.

131 Ibid., p. 22.

132 Gillispie (1980), pp. 337–355.

133 Ibid., p. 45. The list may be of interest: German, Annalen der Landwirtschaft, Journal für Fabriken, Oekonomische Hefte, Reignes Anzeiger, Voights Naturkunde, Scherers Journal der Chemie, Gilberts Annalen der Physik, Jenners Litteratur Zeitung und intelligenz Blatt; English, Young’s Annals of Agriculture, Nicholson’s Journal of Physick, Repertory of Arts and Manufac-tures; American, New York Review; Italian, Brugnatell’s Annales de chimie; Spanish, Annales d’histoire naturelle; French, Annales des arts et manufactures, Annales d’agriculture, Journal de physique, Annales de chimie, Journal des mines, Bibliothèque brittanique.

134 Bulletin de la Société d’Encouragement 22, ccxxxix (1822), pp. 169–183. See Gillispie and Dewachter (1987), pp. 26–28.

135 Ibid., pp. 215–226.

136 Ibid., pp. 257–296.

137 Shinn (1980), Weiss (1982), Day (1988).

138 PVCd’IP 5, pp. 61–64. On the early history of the Conservatoire, see Le Moël and Saint-Paul (1994), Fontanon and Grelon (1994), Grison (1999).

139 Fox (1974b).

140 See the account attributed to René Tresse published as an annex in Grison (1999).

141 See Gillispie and Dewachter (1987), pp. 26–29.

142 On Marc Seguin and Montgolfier, see Gillispie (1983), chapter 5; and for detailed documentation, Cotte (1997).

143 Gillispie (1980), p. 158.

144 Crosland (1978), pp. 28–31.

145 Crosland (1967a).

146 Volume 1, pp. 245–247, vol. 2, pp. 522–523.

147 MIF 7 (1806), pp. 301–385.

148 Crosland edited an excellent reprinted edition (1967b) as a companion to his history of the Society (1967a).

149 Above, chapter 7, section 2.

150 Crosland (1967a). A facsimile of the letter faces p. 278.

151 Mémoires de la Société d’Arcueil 1 (1807), pp. 111–1v.

152 Pancaldi (2002) is a definitive biography. He treats the visit to Paris in chapter 7. For a clear, brief account of Volta’s career, see John Heilbron, DSB 14 (1976), pp. 69–82. Fischer (1988) also gives a full account of Volta’s visit to Paris and relations with Bonaparte, pp. 135– 151.

153 Pancaldi (2002), chapter 7, section 3.

154 PVIF 2, p. 218; “Experiences nouvelles sur le fluide galvanique . . . ,” lues à l’Institut le 11 fructidor an 8, Annales de chimie 37 (December 1800), pp. 132–150. Sutton (1981) gives a thorough account and analysis of the reception of Volta’s battery in Paris.

155 Sutton (1981), pp. 336–345.

156 Quoted in Pancaldi (2002), p. 235.

157 Ibid., pp. 240–243.

158 “Rapport sur les expériences du citoyen Volta,” MIF 5 (1804), pp. 195–222.

159 On Coulomb, see Gillmor (1971), chapter 6.

160 Frankel (1977).

161 Pancaldi (2002), p. 203.