ABSTRACT:

This article examines the social embedding of technical inventions in Britain and France in the second half of the eighteenth century. Small-scale artefacts to improve everyday life marked a new relationship between techniques, public culture, and forces of nature. The ways that micro-inventions such as domestic devices were disseminated through print media, models, and exhibitions demonstrate how inventive strategies and public expectations affected innovation. Producers and users interacted to shape market inventions. Solutions to the problem of ventilation highlight how the dynamics of scale shaped technical inventions, enabling their promotion as multidimensional objects of social reform. Indeed, conceptualizing technologies as scalable transformed prior perceptions of humans' ability to harness nature (such as making noxious air breathable). Civic improvements and industrial innovation also fostered a new materiality, changing how societies perceived their natural environment as well as their impact on it.

摘要：

本文考察了18世纪下半叶英国和法国的技术发明在社会上的嵌入。改善日常生活的小型文物标志着技术，公共文化和自然力量之间的新关系。微型发明（例如家用设备）通过印刷媒体，模型和展览进行传播的方式表明，发明战略和公众期望如何影响创新。生产者和用户进行互动以塑造市场发明。通风问题的解决方案突出了规模发明的动态如何塑造技术发明，使其能够作为社会改革的多维对象得以推广。的确，将技术概念化为可扩展的，改变了人类的先验观念 利用自然的能力（例如使有害空气呼吸）。公民的进步和工业创新也促进了新的重要性，改变了社会对自然环境及其对自然环境的影响的看法。