(^282) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
So much for diffusion. More important for follower countries in the
long run were schools of science and technology. Pitched at the sec
ondary or higher level, these aimed to train a higher order of techni
cians and supervisory personnel and laid the basis of intellectual
autonomy. The French led here with the Ecole Polytechnique (origi
nally named the Ecole Central des Travaux Publics) in 1794. This was
initially designed as a military school for officers in engineering and ar
tillery—branches where technical knowledge mattered. (Any brave fool
could wave a cavalry saber about.) But from the start, the Revolution
ary government appointed a faculty of top scientists and mathemati
cians, and these turned the Ecole in the long run from military lessons
and discipline to the inculcation of maths, basic science, and technical
capability. The competitive character of the institution—exam for ad
mission, public ranking on entry, ranking on partial completion, rank
ing on graduation—drew France's best and brightest; so that although
the school continued to furnish officers to the army, these were not the
top students. The strongest "X"—as the French call them, after the al
gebraic unknown—went into business, private and public, and formed
the cream of French engineering and technocracy. They led in build
ing and managing the French railways; learned and adapted the latest
British metallurgical techniques; directed public works abroad; and by
the twentieth century, came to head some of France's biggest high-tech
corporations.
The Polytechnique was if anything too rarefied and theoretical in its
training. Those graduates who wanted to go on to industry usually
took postgraduate instruction in the Ecole des Mines or the Ponts-et-
Chaussées—both founded under the Old Regime. There they learned
applied science and technology and did on-the-job training. Mean
while French business came to feel that another school was needed, like
the Polytechnique but more practical in its concerns. This was the
Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, founded privately in 1829, in
corporated into the state system in 1856, which served as a training
ground for engineers and business managers. Students of Centrale had
less prestige than the "X" of Polytechnique: the school was younger
and the competition for admission was less keen; but its greater open
ness meant that its graduates did better than the "X" in newer branches
such as motor cars and aviation.
Alongside these two pivotal, general institutions, local schools sprang
up, the vocational écoles d'arts et métiers; and specialized industrial
schools, often founded by employers, for training in particular
nora
(Nora)
#1