Obtaining a Royal Privilege in France for the Watt Engine, 1776–1786

Abstract

Based on unpublished correspondence and legal documents, the article tells an unknown episode of Boulton and Watt’s entrepreneurial saga in eighteenth-century Europe. While the Watt engine had been patented in 1769 in Britain, the two associates sought to protect their invention across the Channel in the 1770s. They coordinated a pragmatic strategy to enrol local allies who helped them to obtain in 1778 an exclusive privilege from the King’s Council to exploit their engine but this had the express condition of its superiority being proven before experts of the Royal Academy of Science. As comparative trials never took place, the privilege proved useless. The French adventure was all the more a failure because two former allies, the Périer brothers, misused Boulton and Watt’s trust and used their know-how and connections to sell counterfeits of the Watt engine. This unfortunate episode contrasts with Boulton and Watt’s well-known success story in England and suggests the redrawing of the general picture of technology transfer from Britain to France in the Age of Enlightenment.

Keywords:

• Watt engine
• royal privilege
• patent
• technology transfer
• eighteenth-century Europe

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Naegel

Paul Naegel first worked as an engineer in industry in France and Germany from 1959 to 1970. He holds two doctorates: the first in models and methods of scientific management from the University of Paris-Dauphine (1982) with the 1987 publication of Face a la Non-Decision, Que faire?; the second in history of technology from the University of Nantes (2006). Since his 2006 association with Centre François Viète for epistemology, history of science and technology, University of Nantes (address as below), Naegel has focused on history of technology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including fire engines and the processes of industrialization in the French departments of Loire Atlantique and Meuse. Email: [email protected]

Pierre Teissier

After his engineering studies, Pierre Teissier completed a PhD in history of science and technology in 2007 at the University of Paris Ouest–Nanterre, whose summary was published as ‘Solid-State Chemistry in France: Structures and Dynamics of a Scientific Community since World War II,’ Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 40, 2 (2010), 225-258. Since he was appointed assistant professor at Centre François Viète in Nantes in 2010, he has orientated his research towards the relations between materials and energy issues in Western history from the eighteenth century onwards.

Correspondence to: Pierre Teissier, Centre François Viète, Faculté de sciences et techniques, 2 rue de la Houssinière, BP 92208, 44322 Nantes, France. Email: pierre. [email protected]