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

Notes

• Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
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• Eric Robinson and Albert E. Musson, James Watt and the Steam Revolution (A. M. Kelley, 1969).
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• H. W. Dickinson, ‘The Steam-Engine to 1830’ in The Industrial Revolution, c. 1750 to c. 1850 (History of Technology, IV), ed. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, T. I. Williams, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 168–198, pp. 172 and 182.
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• John Lord, Capital and Steam Power, 1750–1800 (London: P. S. King & Son, Orchard House, Westminster, 1923), p. 97.
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• Jennifer Tann, ‘Marketing Methods in the International Steam Engine Market: The Case of Boulton and Watt’, Journal of Economic History, 38·2 (1978), 363–91.
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• Jennifer Tann and Michael J. Breckin, ‘The International Diffusion of the Watt Engine, 1775–1825’, The Economic History Review, new series, 31·4 (1978), 544, table 3. Some fifty requests were sent to Boulton and Watt from France between 1775 and 1825.
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• Ibid., p. 542.
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• Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire ou Métier d’historien, 3rd edn (Paris: Armand Colin, 2002), p. 51.
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• François Crouzet, ‘Angleterre et France au XVIIIe siècle: essai d’analyse comparée de deux croissances économiques’ [England and France in the Eighteenth Century: A Comparative Analysis of Two Economic Growths], Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 21·2 (1966) for example.
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• John Kanefsky and John Robey, ‘Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment’, Technology and Culture, 21·2 (1980), 170.
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• Donald S. L. Cardwell, ‘Power Technologies and the Advance of Science, 1700–1825’, Technology and Culture, 6·2 (1965), 189–90. No fewer than eight types of different steam engines are listed for the eighteenth century.
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• John R. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer — Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998), p. 288.
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• Allen, p. 156.
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• Ibid., p. 161. In fact, Savary’s patent was first granted in July 1698 for the standard fourteen years and extended in April 1699 by Parliament for an additional period of 21 years, i.e. until 1733. Dickinson, p. 172–5 and Robinson, 1964, p. 214.
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• Harris, p. 288; Kanefsky and Robey, pp. 168 and 175.
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• Frederic M. Scherer, ‘Invention and Innovation in the Watt-Boulton Steam-Engine Venture’, Technology and Culture, 6·2 (1965), 166–68.
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• James P. Muirhead, The life of James Watt, 2nd edn (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 161. Watt wrote to John Roebuck on 23 August 1765: ‘I have tried my new engine with good success’.
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• Patent number 913 of 1769. Secondary sources disagree on the date of the patent: 5 January in Paul Mantoux, La révolution industrielle au XVIIIe siècle, Essai sur les commencements de la grande industrie moderne en Angleterre [The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England] (Paris: Génin, 1959), p. 332, n. 2; 9 January in Jacques Payen, Capital et machines à vapeur au XVIIIe siècle — Les frères Périer et l’introduction en France de la machine à vapeur de Watt (Paris: Mouton, 1969), p. 31.
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• Muirhead, p. 168. Watt had not met Boulton then, but Fothergill.
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• Mantoux, p. 339.
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• Ibid., p. 340. Watt announces in a letter to his father: ‘The matter that has brought me here is turning out to be good rather than bad: the engine I have built works now, and the results are more superior than those of any other that has been invented before mine. I expect this invention will be very profitable’.
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• Ibid., pp. 332, 340–41. A petition for the extension of the patent was addressed by Watt to the House of Commons on 23 February 1775. It was examined with the utmost care thanks to Boulton’s relations in the scientific world, and on 22 May 1775, the patent from 1769 was extended for a period of twenty-five years through a ‘special law’. For a detailed account of Boulton and Watt’s parliamentary lobby, see B. D. Bargar, ‘Matthew Boulton and the Birmingham Petition of 1775’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 13. 1 (1956), 26–39; and Eric Robinson, ‘Matthew Boulton and the Art of Parliamentary Lobbying’, The Historical Journal, 7·2 (1964), 209–229.
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• Scherer, p. 173.
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• Muirhead. This division of tasks appears in the partnership agreement signed between Boulton and Watt.
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• The date of 27 January 1774 for Wilkinson’s patent was given in 2000 on Georges Vanderquand’s personal website, which is no longer available.
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• Peter M. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment: Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 55. It was not until 1795 that Boulton and Watt established their own foundry in Soho, which allowed them to make cylinders of sufficient size without Wilkinson’s help.
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• Jennifer Tann, ‘Suppliers of Parts: The Relationship between Boulton and Watt and the Suppliers of Engine Components, 1775–1795’, Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society Transactions, 86 (1974), 167–77.
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• Harris, p. 300.
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• D’Hérouville, ‘Mémoire sur une nouvelle machine à feu’ [Essay on a New Fire Engine], Unpublished essay dated from 15 January 1778 and signed Hérouville — AN F12 2205. ‘Very few fire engines are used in France, and when they are used, they are taken from abroad’.
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• Tann and Breckin, p. 548. ‘There were probably about 14 engines in French Hainaut besides others on the Nord Coalfield and in Brittany’. If we consider that there were around twenty fire engines in France, then there was a ratio of one to thirty between the two countries.
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• Harris.
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• Tann and Breckin, p. 548. It ‘is presumed that an indigenous French atmospheric engine industry had developed by about the 1770s, if not before’.
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• Ibid., p. 550.
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• John R. Harris, ‘Matthew Boulton: A Slight Adjustment of the Halo’, in Les entreprises et leurs réseaux: Hommes, capitaux, techniques et pouvoirs, XIXe–XXe siècles: mélanges en l’honneur de François Caron, ed. M. Merger and D. Barjot (Paris, La Sorbonne, 1998), p. 358. Le Camus de Limare was one of the first Frenchmen aware of the Watt engine.
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• Denise Ozanam, Claude Baudard de Sainte-James, trésorier général de la Marine et brasseur d’affaires (1738–1787) (Geneva-Paris, Librairie Droz, 1969), p. 43.
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• Camus de Limare to Boulton, 28 December 1778: ‘Thanks Matthew Boulton for his hospitality when he met him, John Wilkinson and Mr Coulson in 1773, at the recommendation of Messrs. Motteux & Panchard [sic]’.
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• Tann and Breckin, p. 544.
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• Lord, p. 208. In 1768, Boulton was asked to sell counterfeit coins of ‘deux sous’ in France but he refused. From that time, it seems that Boulton was in contact with Panchaud.
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• Albert E. Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1968).
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• John R. Harris, Essays in Industry and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: England and France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1992), ch. 4: ‘Michael Alcock and the transfer of Birmingham technology to France before the Revolution’.
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• Payen, p. 104.
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• Harris, Essays, p. 300.
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• Joseph Alcock, Roanne, 10 January 1778, signed ‘Alcock, entrepreneur de la Maison de quincaillerie anglaise’ [Entrepreneur of the English ironmongery] AN F12 2205. The recipient of the letter is not mentioned (it might have been Trudaine first but he died just before) but the letter in itself can be taken for an unofficial report to the sponsor of the mission: the Royal Academy. The following quotations of the paragraph are translated from the letter.
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• Jennifer Tann, ‘Marketing Methods’, p. 366. ‘The early overseas marketing strategies of Boulton and Watt were Boultoninspired. […] Protection was thus a central issue in the formulation of their domestic business policy-and no arguments were advanced for modifying this policy in overseas markets’.
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• Tann and Breckin, p. 551.
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• Liliane Hilaire-Perez, L’invention technique au siècle des Lumières [Technical Invention During the Enlightenment] (Paris, Albin Michel, 2000), in particular ch. 3: ‘Privilèges français et patents anglais’.
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• Tann and Breckin, pp. 550–51.
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• D’Hérouville, n. 28. ‘The Count d’Hérouville was obliged for fifteen to sixteen years to supplement the natural flow of waters from the Moëres, which had been removed by the destruction of the cunette [channel for draining water from a fortification] from Dunkirk, enforced under the peace treaty of 1763, to establish in the Moëres an ordinary fire engine and since then fourteen large windmills to raise the waters and discharge them away from the Moëres’.
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• Harris, Essays, p. 304.
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• Necker to d’Hérouville, Paris, 23 February 1778. AN Marine, G110, F°147.
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• D’Hérouville, n. 28. ‘The Count d’Hérouville […] had opportunity to verify, through the examination and report of several learned men or connoisseurs, that this engine was absolutely of a different construction from the previous ones, that the air pressure is much better and more usefully employed than in the others, that its effect is less precarious and more proportional to the consumption of coal used; and that it expends considerably less coal, all other conditions being equal, but that Nobody until now has known its true construction’.
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• D’Hérouville, ‘Observations du Comte d’Hérouville pour les Srs Boulton et Watt’, undated (after the judgment of 14 April, probably in May). AN Marine, G110, F°160.
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• It may be a spelling error. The same spelling can be found in the text of the judgment.
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• King’s Council, Judgment of 14 April 1778. AN E 1548. The original text of the judgment is transcribed in Annex I. To date, it is not published in its entirety.
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• De Magellan to d’Hérouville, 17 April 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°151. ‘I would like to be able to announce hereby the day in which Mr Boulton was due to leave for Flanders, but he has not yet arrived, as he had promised, to London, and I have just written to him about it again’.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 22 April 1778. AN Marine, G110, F°190. ‘We are, Mr Watt and myself, so overworked that it would be a great inconvenience for either of us to go at present to Paris’.
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• D’Hérouville, Observations, n. 51.
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• This sale is attested by a letter of d’Hérouville to d’Angivillers (Director-General of the royal buildings), 14 June 1778, with Necker’s consent. AN Marine, G110, F 170.
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• D’Hérouville, Observations, n. 51.
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• D’Hérouville to the director of the royal buildings, 14 June 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°170.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 16 October 1778, BCL, MS 3147/3/81/134. Boulton mentioned ‘the great expense of erecting an engine at Paris’.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 22 August 1778. AN Marine, G110, F°172.
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• Boulton confused the spelling of Nort-sur-Erdre with the north region (Nord) but he probably understood where Nantes was situated.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 22 August 1778. AN Marine, G110, — F°172. ‘I would also ask you to inform Mr count d’Hérouville that, having been exceedingly busy this year with erecting more than twenty of our new beam or reciprocal engines (all very large), we never had the time to complete our rotary or circular engine, and we consequently wish that our privilege was restricted to the other kind […] the beam engine which will be the only one put to the trial, at least some time from now’.
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• Watt had certainly had the idea of a ‘circular motion’ but he had not filed a patent before 1782. John Farey, Jr, A treatise on the steam engine, historical, practical, and descriptive (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1827), pl. 15 exemplified a drawing of the circular engine. Reference communicated by Marc Thomas (Centre François Viète).
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• Arrêt confirmatif du 21 mai 1746, Languin [Languin Confirmatory judgment, 21 May 1746], ADLA, 8 S 21.
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• Joseph Jary, ‘Mémoire de S.J. Jary’, 6 October 1783, AD35, C1473.
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• Ibid. ‘It did not have great success, we were mistaken; in 1778, it had to be restored and carried 400 toises more to Levant, we were preparing for it when the Englishman Mr Wilkenson arrived on the scene and during conversation gave us the idea of a new engine whose power came from the steam of boiling water’.
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• Paul Naegel, ‘Marchand de la Houlière et la création de la fonderie de canons d’Indret (1775–1778)’, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 115·4 (2008), 55–79.
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• Jary.
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• Jary to d’Hérouville, Note, AN Marine, G110, F°186. Jary signs ‘Jary, Tradesman, Quai Flesselles at Nantes’.
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• William H. Chaloner, Industry and Innovation — Selected Essays (London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1990), p. 61.
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• Ibid., p. 19.
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• Boulton to a ‘Lord’ (probably Macquer), 16 October 1778, BCL, MS 3147/3/81/135.
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• Chaloner, pp. 61 and 78 (n. 18). Relying on a letter from Boulton to Wilkinson, 16 April 1778 (AN Marine, G110, F°172 for the English version, F°174 for the French version), Chaloner wrote: ‘John Wilkinson took up Jary’s cause with considerable enthusiasm and suggested to Soho that he should get the casting ready to ship immediately news of the arrêt was received. Boulton and Watt remained more cautious’.
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• This unpublished note from 19 August 1778 was entitled ‘État des machines à feu de la nouvelle construction établies en Angleterre par les Srs. Boulton et Watt et dont une partie a été vue par le Sr. Jary’ [State of new invented fire engines established in England by Messrs Boulton and Watt, part of which was seen by Mr Jary]. There is a copy of this document, certified as a true copy, held in the Archives Nationales: AN Marine, G110, F°179.
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• Peter Jones, personal communication to one author, 2009.
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• Wilkinson to Watt, 1 November 1778, cited by Chaloner, pp. 61 and 72 (note 20). This is confirmed by a letter from Boulton and Watt to d’Hérouville, 16 October 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°180 and 181: ‘We are not ignorant that Mr Jary has endeavored to obtain an engine without our permission’.
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• Boulton to Jary, 12 October 1778, BCL, MS 147/3/81/133. The information is confirmed by Chaloner, p. 72 (n. 8).
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• This sum represents about 3000 livres tournois, which was six times the amount of the fine provided for by the privilege of 14 April 1778. It was therefore Boulton and Watt’s expertise that the customer purchased rather than the law.
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• AN Marine, G110, F°187.
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• Boulton and Watt to d’Hérouville, 16 October 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°180 and 181.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 16 October 1778. BCL — MS 3147/3/81/134. ‘I have therefore drawn a request in our name & Mr Jary hath drawn another in his own name to the conseil d’etat praying that the trial indicated in the judgment of 14 April is made on the fire engine which will be erected on the coal mines from Nort in Brittany’. This is confirmed by the letter of Boulton to a ‘Lord’ (probably Macquer), 16 October 1778, BCL, MS 3147/3/81/135.
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• Jary’s technical mastery is mentioned in the three letters written by Boulton on 16 October 1778. He is also described as ‘a man of character and abilities’ to d’Hérouville in the letter that Boulton and Watt addressed to him on the same day.
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• James Keir to Boulton, 11 November 1778, BCL–Inventory file REEL 11 according to http://www.adam-matthew-publications. co.uk/digital_guides/industrial_revolution/detailed%20listing%20-%20part%201.aspx (accessed 21 November 2012), see reel 11, James Keir, 1772-1811, Item 33, but the exact classification number is not revealed.
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• Boulton and Watt to d’Hérouville, 16 October 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°180 and 181.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 1 January 1779, BCL (Register of correspondence issued by Watt) F°97 and 98 — letter no. 152. ‘If the Count d’Hérouville could obtain permission for us to make this trial in Bretagne, and if the trial so made would be effectual towards the obtaining the second Arret de Conseil we would without loss of time proceed to erect an Engine for Mr Jary. We have not thought proper to make Mr Jary acquainted with any of the measures that have been taken towards obtaining an exclusive privilege — but we have delayed giving him a decisive answer to his propositions till we knew whether his Engine can be made the subject of the trial required by the Arret de Conseil’. At that moment, the installation of the engine in Languin was finalized and Jary had also submitted a request to the King’s Council on behalf of Boulton and Watt.
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• Ibid. ‘I beg also you will acquaint the Count d’Herouville that we have never had yet the time to complete the Annular Engine from our being so much engaged in the erection of Beam Engines, and therefore which our exclusive privilege to be confined to the other sort of which alone we shall made the proposed trial at least for some time’.
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• Tolozan to Jary, 13 December 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°192 and Tolozan to de Magellan, 13 December 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°193.
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• Boulton to de Magellan, 1 January 1779, BCL (Register of correspondence issued by Watt) F°97 and 98 — letter no. 152. Through this letter, Boulton asked de Magellan to inform d’Hérouville that they would try with Jary to hold the comparative trials in Brittany. In the event that they would not obtain the necessary authorization, he proposed to send a ‘model’ of a Watt engine to Paris. Clearly, Boulton was not informed at that time of the authorization from Tolozan given via d’Hérouville on 13 December 1778. This can be put down either to negligence, or to the difficulties in mail delivery due to the war between France and England from 10 July 1778.
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• Watt to Jary, 27 January 1779, BCL, F°120, letter no. 172.
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• File of Jary’s engine containing documents and plans dated from January 1779 to October 1780, including a document entitled ‘Mr Jary’s Engine — January 1779’. Birmingham City Archives. The existence of the file and copies of several documents have been kindly communicated to us by Professor Peter Jones (University of Birmingham).
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• Watt to Spedding Hicks & Company, 20 January 1779, BCL, F°114, letter no. 164.
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• BCL, F°120, letter no. 174.
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• Watt to Jary, 26 March 1781. Subsequent correspondence — after the arrival of the boat to Nantes. Also contains the instructions for the installation of the engine. BCL (undisclosed shelf mark), as indicated by Chaloner, pp. 69 and 74 (n. 72): ‘concerning the payment of supplies, asked Jary to pay Wilkinson directly’.
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• De Magellan to d’Hérouville, 19 January 1779, AN Marine, G110, F°199.
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• Camus de Limare to Boulton, 28 December 1778, BCL. In addition, Camus of Limare requested an estimate regarding the cost of a steam engine for a blast furnace. Watt sent him in a letter dated 26 January 1779 an estimate amounting to £2000, excluding the cylinder to be bought from Wilkinson.
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• Jary to d’Hérouville, Note, 30 November 1778, AN Marine, G110, F°186. ‘We could establish a project with the city of Paris to supply it with water against Mr P.. r’. Speculations follow on how to proceed in this case.
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• Jean Bouchary, L’eau à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle: la Compagnie des Eaux et l’entreprise de l’Yvette (Paris: Rivière, 1946).
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• Minutes of the Academy of Sciences, meeting of 3 February 1776.
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• Payen, pp. 32 and 102.
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• Richard A. Baker, ‘John Wilkinson and the Paris Water Pipes’, Wilkinson Studies, ii, ed. R. A. Baker (Merton Priory Press, 1992), 59.
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• Ozanam, p. 36. Banker Panchaud was one of the main associates of this Compagnie des Eaux de Paris.
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• Ibid., p. 33. The initial capital consisted of 1200 shares, each worth 1200 livres tournois, i.e. 1·44 million livres tournois.
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• Baker.
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• Payen, p. 34 (chronology). The Compagnie des Eaux de Paris actually delivered water in Paris from July 1782 to April 1788, when it was dissolved because of financial difficulties due to stock market speculation, and turned into Royal Administration.
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• ‘Recommendations from Academicians at the start of the project’. Minutes of meetings of the Academy of Science, Vol. 95, meeting of 9 March 1776.
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• Jacques Seebacher, ‘Autour de ‘Figaro’: Beaumarchais, la famille de Choiseul et le financier Clavière’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 62·2 (1962), 209. The land was bought to the comtesse de Boufflers on 4 September 1778.
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• The analysis which follows is based on Payen; the archives that he cited: AN, Minutier Central, Study XXX, bundle 460, Minute of 19 October 1778.
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• Chaloner, pp. 60 and 71 (n. 7), citing a letter from Boulton to an unknown addressee, 2 May 1777: ‘The sum of intelligence concerning Perrier is […] that W. Wilkinson went over to solicit orders for the pipes &c’. Payen, p. 32. In April 1777, Périer went to England and met the older brother, John Wilkinson, in Broseley. He then allegedly promised him a large order — of over forty miles of pipes — in return for Wilkinson’s promise to buy shares in the company which he was building.
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• Chaloner, p. 60. ‘Perrier, when he went to Broseley, was resolved to have common engines; that afterwards he was convinced that ours were much superior’.
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• Boulton expressed this distrust of Wilkinson in a letter dated 3 May 1777. He brought it up again in a letter from 22 May 1777 stating that Wilkinson was building a cylinder for an unknown client (who was most probably Périer). BCL, MS 3147/3/1/11.
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• This attitude may be dictated by Boulton’s warnings. Indeed, Boulton expressed his distrust of Wilkinson in a letter dated 3 May 1777. He brought it up again in a letter from 22 May 1777 stating that Wilkinson was building a cylinder for an unknown client (who was most probably Périer). BCL, MS 3147/3/1/11.
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• Payen, p. 106, with a correction of the date of the letter.
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• Payen, p. 114. Twenty shares represent one-sixtieth of the initial share capital of the Water Company of Paris (1200 shares).
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• De Magellan to d’Hérouville, 13 January 1779, AN Marine, G110, F°197. ‘I have just received from them, that is to say from the first two (Boulton and Watt), a letter, about the matters that they have arranged with Mr Périer, who came here expressly to have two of the New engines, and they refused to act without your approval. I told them that surely you would approve which would tend to the common good of France and at the same time to the interests of individuals, for we must always combine the individual good with the common good to make it long-lasting’.
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• Lord, pp. 90ff.
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• Périer to Boulton and Watt, 7 January 1779, BCL, MS 3147/3/156.
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• De Magellan to d’Hérouville, 19 January 1779, AN Marine, G110, F°199.
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• Boulton to Watt, 20 January 1779 from <www.ampltd.co.uk/digital_guides/industrial_revolution_series_one_parts_12_and_13/documents/Reel198.pdf> — Items 3/3/2 (accessed 28 October 2008).
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• Watt to Wilkinson, 15 January 1779, BCL, F°111, letter no. 160. Watt wrote: ‘Mr Perier has communicated to his Company our proposal and stays answer in London. He seems disposed to give up something. Mr Boulton is now in London and I shall go if necessary. In case of our agreeing with Mr Périer, hope you will guard against making him any cylinders which may be altered so as to elude our privilege, though I should expect him to be more of a gentlemen than to do such a thing’.
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• Chaloner, p. 20.
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• Boulton to Watt, 27 January 1779, BCL, MS 3147/3/3/7. ‘We were right in our conjectures about Périer wishing to get from us some exorbitant proposals in writing to injure us at Paris; I have seen Wilkinson, McDermott and Motteux today, who advises us by all means to agree with Périer’.
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• Boulton to Watt, 30 January 1779, BCL, MS 3147/3/3/9.
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• Ibid. ‘If I had not closed yesterday it would never had been done as he [Périer] last night received a letter from his Company proposing at their ultimatum 15 shares now and 15 at next creation’.
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• Boulton to Watt, 30 January 1779, BCL, MS 3147/3/3/9. ‘Adjourned till Tuesday and them to meet at Mr Motteux and there finally sign deal’. No track of the signed agreement from 2 February 1778 has been found so far, so it is not clear whether the deal was signed.
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• Payen, p. 113.
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• Boulton to Watt, 30 January 1779, BCL, MS 3147/3/3/9.
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• Boulton to Watt, 2 February 1779, BCL, MS 3147/3/3/10. Boulton announced his associate: ‘I shall attend Mr Perrier tomorrow night in the Coach to Coventry, and come Birmingham on Friday morning. Pray tell my wife we shall dine her on Friday’.
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• Muirhead, p. 260. Muirhead suggests that Périer may have had the opportunity to visit the factory in Soho but is unsure whether Périer and Watt actually worked together.
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• Payen, p. 254.
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• Ibid., p. 254, clause 12.
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• Payen, p. 32 (chronology). 6 November 1779: ‘Périer falls into the water during the disembarkment of the engine’.
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• Périer to Boulton and Watt, 7 December 1781, cited in Payen, p. 125.
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• Payen, p. 126. ‘In August 1786, in fact, Boulton and Watt complained that they had written several times without receiving an answer, ‘but in consequence of a conversation that Mr St James held with our friend Mr Argand, we have been flatered that it will be agreeable to your Company to pay the bill of our account’. It is specified that the total sum is 27,668 livres tournois, ‘which includes the interest on the first sums on the time they where due to this time. We have not charges any interest on the 24,000 livres agreed to be paid at the augmentation of the original number of 1,200 shares.’’
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• Boulton to Watt, 14 February 1783, BCL, MS 3147/3/1–79. ‘Received Perrier’s account. Wilkinson has engine lying at Bersham for Perrier to be erected at St Domingo. Put not your trust in founders’.
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• ADLA, Cote C 1063, INDRET.
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• Compte rendu de la visite des ateliers de Chaillot, en 1786, par une commission de l’Académie des sciences [Report of the visits to the workshops from Chaillot in 1786 by a committee of the Academy of Sciences]. Minutes of meetings of the Academy of Science, Vol. 105.
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• The letters and people thus travelled in time of war more easily than the supplies. Obtaining the necessary English and French passports was indeed less difficult for people than for boats. In addition, ‘ad valorem’ insurances had to be signed for the transported goods, which were very costly in time of war due to frequent piracy.
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• Duhamel, Rapport d’inspection de septembre 1781 [Inspection report of September 1781], AN, F14, 7777.
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• Tann and Breckin, pp. 544, 561. The two other orders came from Becconnais and Company (flourmill) in 1789 and Beguyères and Company in 1791. In both cases, the intermediary had been a certain Levêque.
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• In Payen the author honours Périer with the best laurels. None of the following authors discard this praise.
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• Lord, p. 165.
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• Harris, Industrial Espionage, pp. 317–18. For a biography of Betancourt, see Irina Gouzevitch, Augustin Bétancourt (1758–1824): le parangon de l’ingénieur européen (Rennes, Rennes University Press, 2006).
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