Chapter 6 Fire Mechanics: Inventors and Promoters of Heating Systems (Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century)
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Abstract
Until the eighteenth century, the question of domestic heating, which was of utmost importance for everyday life, had rarely attracted the interest of artisans, inventors, and scientists. The first author to address specifically the question of heating systems was Nicolas Gauger, who published in 1713 the seminal work La Mécanique du feu, ou l’art d’en augmenter les effets et d’en diminuer la dépense. In this chapter, I will explore the main steps leading to the codification of a practical knowledge of domestic fire in the eighteenth century, as a key example to display the complexity of the path to technological invention. I will also present the tools and methods deployed by the actors involved in this technological research, whom I will call – in reference to the title of Gauger’s book – “fire mechanics,” namely specialists of domestic heating systems, trying to sketch a profile of this group of practitioners. Finally, I will show how the efforts of the “fire mechanics” contributed to the emergence, at the turn of the nineteenth century, of an actual market of heating machines, of which I will illustrate the main actors and their commercial strategies.