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People
Étienne Lenoir (1744-1825)
Lenoir was an instrument maker, the son of a “poor but honest” stone mason, born in a
village in the Loire valley and first trained as a locksmith. In 1772 he was employed as an
instrument maker in Paris and studied mathematics by attending one of the free courses
available to craftsmen. He set up his own business, supplying specialized astronomical
instruments of high quality to leading scientists as well as making mathematical instru-
ments for a larger market.
Lenoir played an important part in making and perfecting Borda's instrument
(Turner 1989). He had just moved to Paris and was less than forty years old, working
within (and triumphing) over a craft system in Paris that was restrictive and class
ridden but progressively being broken down by reformers (Daumas 1972). In
seventeenth-century France, craftsmen and workshops had been strictly regulated
by guilds which a craftsman could enter under a very restrictive set of rules. In
some cases the rules had nothing to do with talent at the job. Someone could
become a guild member by being the son of a guild member, through election by
the existing members, or by “privilege” (having residence in certain places, typi-
cally church property). In Lenoir's case, however, he did serve an apprenticeship
and make a “masterpiece” as a demonstration of skill. After paying admittance fees
and annual dues the craftsman could set up as a master craftsman with his own
workshop but what he could make and the materials and tools that he could use
were regulated by the guilds.
There was a dispute in the mid seventeenth-century over whether the making of
mathematical instruments of copper was the prerogative of the cutlers (who made
not only cutlery but also surgical instruments and cases for astrological instru-
ments) or of the founders, who had the right to cast copper. The dispute was decided
in favor of the founders and as a result mathematical instrument makers were in the
same guild as people who cast guns, printer's type, and bells, and therefore regu-
lated accordingly. The instrument makers were allowed to use a variety of tools but
could only affix optical telescopes to the instruments, not make them, their lenses
or mirrors. Guilds had the right to search workshops and to confiscate or destroy
tools, patterns or products that were outside the regulations.
By the mid eighteenth-century the guild system was being liberalized but too
slowly for the astronomers of the Academy. A patent system was set up by which an
inventor could obtain a licence to manufacture his invention regardless of the guilds'
restrictions and government commissions were supposed to be in the same class.
A special class of instrument maker called
Ingénieur de Roi
(Engineer to the King)
was created to recognize the most skilled craftsmen or those who had special commis-
sions and exempt them from restrictions. Nevertheless in 1785 instruments
commissioned by Cassini IV for the Paris Observatory were seized from Lenoir's
workshop. Lenoir was not a master-craftsman but had a certificate of immunity from
the police saying that he was the only instrument maker in Paris capable of the work.
Unfortunately his work was confiscated by jurymen from the master Founders'
Guild. Only by the intervention of Cassini was Lenoir able regain possession.
Cassini became increasingly frustrated by these battles and his difficulty in
obtaining instruments of the right standard from French instrument makes. He set up
